THE HISTORY

OF

DAVID GRIEVE

BY

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

AUTHOR OF 'ROBERT ELSMERE, ' ETC. 

TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

BOOK I CHILDHOOD

BOOK II YOUTH

BOOK III STORM AND STRESS

BOOK IV MATURITY

BOOK I CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER I

'Tak your hat, Louie! Yo're allus leavin summat behind yer. '

'David, yo go for 't, ' said the child addressed to a boy by herside, nodding her head insolently towards the speaker, a tall andbony woman, who stood on the steps the children had just descended, holding out a battered hat. 

'Yo're a careless thing, Louie, ' said the boy, but he went back andtook the hat. 

'Mak her tie it, ' said the woman, showing an antiquated pair ofstrings. 'If she loses it she needna coom cryin for anudder. She'dlose her yead if it wor loose. '

Then she turned and went back into the house. It was a smallishhouse of grey stone, three windows above, two and a door below. Dashes of white on the stone gave, as it were, eyebrows to thewindows, and over the door there was a meagre trellised porch, upwhich grew some now leafless roses and honeysuckles. To the left ofthe door a scanty bit of garden was squeezed in between the hill, against which the house was set edgeways, and the rest of the flatspace, occupied by the uneven farmyard, the cart-shed and stable, the cow-houses and duck-pond. This garden contained two shabbyapple trees, as yet hardly touched by the spring; some currant andgooseberry bushes, already fairly green; and a clump or two ofscattered daffodils and wallflowers. The hedge round it was brokenthrough in various places, and it had a casual neglected air. 

The children went their way through the yard. In front of them aflock of some forty sheep and lambs pushed along, guarded by twoblack short-haired collies. The boy, brandishing a long stick, opened a gate deplorably in want of mending, and the sheep crowdedthrough, keenly looked after by the dogs, who waited meanwhile ontheir flanks with heads up, ears cocked, and that air ofself-restrained energy which often makes a sheep-dog more humanthan his master. The field beyond led to a little larch plantation, where a few primroses showed among the tufts of long, rich grass, and the drifts of last year's leaves. Here the flock scattered alittle, but David and the dogs were after them in a twinkling, andthe plantation gate was soon closed on the last bleating mother. Then there was nothing more for the boy to do than to go up to thetop of the green rising ground on which the farm stood and see ifthe gate leading to the moor was safely shut. For the sheep he hadbeen driving were not meant for the open moorland. Their feedinggrounds lay in the stone-walled fields round the homestead, and hadthey strayed on to the mountain beyond, which was reserved for ahardier Scotch breed, David would have been answerable. So hestrode, whistling, up the hill to have a look at that top gate, while Louie sauntered down to the stream which ran round the lowerpastures to wait for him. 

The top gate was fast, but David climbed the wall and stood there awhile, hands in his pockets, legs apart, whistling and looking. 

'They can't see t' Downfall from Stockport to-day, ' he was sayingto himself; 'it's coomin ower like mad. '

Some distance away in front of him, beyond the undulating heatherground at his feet, rose a magnificent curving front of moor, thesteep sides of it crowned with black edges and cliffs of grit, theoutline of the south-western end sweeping finely up on the right toa purple peak, the king of all the moorland round. No such colouras clothed that bronzed and reddish wall of rock, heather, andbilberry is known to Westmoreland, hardly to Scotland; it seems tobe the peculiar property of that lonely and inaccessible districtwhich marks the mountainous centre of mid-England--the district ofKinder Scout and the High Peak. Before the boy's ranging eye spreadthe whole western rampart of the Peak--to the right, the highestpoint, of Kinder Low, to the left, 'edge' behind 'edge, ' till thecentral rocky mass sank and faded towards the north into milderforms of green and undulating hills. In the very centre of thegreat curve a white and surging mass of water cleft the mountainfrom top to bottom, falling straight over the edge, here some twothousand feet above the sea, and roaring downward along an almostprecipitous bed into the stream--the Kinder--which swept round thehill on which the boy was standing, and through the valley behindhim. In ordinary times the 'Downfall, ' as the natives call it, onlymakes itself visible on the mountain-side as a black ravine oftossed and tumbled rocks. But there had been a late snowfall on thehigh plateau beyond, followed by heavy rain, and the swollen streamwas to-day worthy of its grand setting of cliff and moor. On suchoccasions it becomes a landmark for all the country round, for thecotton-spinning centres of New Mills and Stockport, as well as forthe grey and scattered farms which climb the long backs of moorlandlying between the Peak and the Cheshire border. 

To-day, also, after the snow and rains of early April, the air wasclear again. The sun was shining; a cold, dry wind was blowing;there were sounds of spring in the air, and signs of it on thethorns and larches. Far away on the boundary wall of the farmland acuckoo was sitting, his long tail swinging behind him, hismonotonous note filling the valley; and overhead a couple ofpeewits chased each other in the pale, windy blue. 

The keen air, the sun after the rain, sent life and exhilarationthrough the boy's young limbs. He leapt from the wall, and racedback down the field, his dogs streaming behind him, the sheep, withtheir newly dropped lambs, shrinking timidly to either side as hepassed. He made for a corner in the wall, vaulted it on to themoor, crossed a rough dam built in the stream for sheep-washingpurposes, jumped in and out of the two grey-walled sheep-pensbeyond, and then made leisurely for a spot in the brook--not theDownfall stream, but the Red Brook, one of its westerlyaffluents--where he had left a miniature water-wheel at work theday before. Before him and around him spread the brown bosom ofKinder Scout; the cultivated land was left behind; here on allsides, as far as the eye could see, was the wild home of heatherand plashing water, of grouse and peewit, of cloud and breeze. 

The little wheel, shaped from a block of firwood, was turningmerrily under a jet of water carefully conducted to it from aneighbouring fall. David went down on hands and knees to examineit. He made some little alteration in the primitive machinery ofit, his fingers touching it lightly and neatly, and then, delightedwith the success of it, he called Louie to come and look. 

Louie was sitting a few yards further up the stream, crooning toherself as she swung to and fro, and snatching every now and thenat some tufts of primroses growing near her, which she wrenchedaway with a hasty, wasteful hand, careless, apparently, whetherthey reached her lap or merely strewed the turf about her withtheir torn blossoms. When David called her she gathered up theflowers anyhow in her apron, and dawdled towards him, leaving atrail of them behind her. As she reached him, however, she wasstruck by a book sticking out of his pocket, and, stooping overhim, with a sudden hawk-like gesture, as he sprawled headdownwards, she tried to get hold of it. 

But he felt her movement. 'Let goo!' he said imperiously, and, throwing himself round, while one foot slipped into the water, hecaught her hand, with its thin predatory fingers, and pulled thebook away. 

'Yo just leave my books alone, Louie. Yo do 'em a mischeef whaniveryo can--an I'll not have it. '

He turned his handsome, regular face, crimsoned by his position andsplashed by the water, towards her with an indignant air. Shelaughed, and sat herself down again on the grass, looking a veryimp of provocation. 

'They're stupid, ' she said, shortly. 'They mak yo a stupid gonnerony ways. '

'Oh! do they?' he retorted, angrily. 'Bit I'll be even wi yo. I'lltell yo noa moor stories out of 'em, not if yo ast iver so. '

The girl's mouth curled contemptuously, and she began to gather herprimroses into a bunch with an air of the utmost serenity. She wasa thin, agile, lightly made creature, apparently about eleven. Herpiercing black eyes, when they lifted, seemed to overweight theface, whereof the other features were at present small and pinched. The mouth had a trick of remaining slightly open, showing a line ofsmall pearly teeth; the chin was a little sharp and shrewish. Asfor the hair, it promised to be splendid; at present it was anunkempt, tangled mass, which Hannah Grieve, the children's aunt, for her own credit's sake at chapel, or in the public street, madeoccasional violent attempts to reduce to order--to very littlepurpose, so strong and stubborn was the curl of it. The wholefigure was out of keeping with the English moorside, with thesheep, and the primroses. 

But so indeed was that of the boy, whose dark colouring was morevivacious and pronounced than his sister's, because the red of hischeek and lip was deeper, while his features, though larger thanhers, were more finely regular, and his eyes had the same piercingblackness, the same all-examining keenness, as hers. The yellowishtones of his worn fustian suit and a red Tam-o'-Shanter capcompleted the general effect of brilliancy and, as it were, _foreignness_. 

Having finished his inspection of his water-mill, he scrambledacross to the other side of the stream so as to be well out of hissister's way, and, taking out the volume which was stretching hispocket, he began to read it. It was a brown calf-bound book, muchworn, and on its title-page it bore the title of 'The Wars ofJerusalem, ' of Flavius Josephus, translated by S. Calmet, and adate somewhere in the middle of the eighteenth century. To thisantique fare the boy settled himself down. The two collies laycouched beside him; a stone-chat perched on one or other of thegreat blocks which lay scattered over the heath gave out hisclinking note; while every now and then the loud peevish cluck ofthe grouse came from the distant sides of the Scout. 

Titus was now making his final assault on the Temple. The Zealotswere gathered in the innermost court, frantically beseeching Heavenfor a sign; the walls, the outer approaches of the Sanctuary werechoked with the dying and the dead. David sat absorbed, elbows onknees, his face framed in his hands. Suddenly the descent ofsomething cold and clammy on his bent neck roused him with a mostunpleasant shock. 

Quick as lightning he faced round, snatching at his assailant; butLouie was off, scudding among the bilberry hillocks with peals oflaughter, while the slimy moss she had just gathered from the edgesof the brook sent cold creeping streams into the recesses ofDavid's neck and shoulders. He shook himself free of the mess asbest he could, and rushed after her. For a long time he chased herin vain, then her foot tripped, and he came up with her just as sherolled into the heather, gathered up like a hedgehog againstattack, her old hat held down over her ears and face. David fellupon her and chastised her; but his fisticuffs probably looked moreformidable than they felt, for Louie laughed provokingly all thetime, and when he stopped out of breath she said exultantly, as shesprang up, holding her skirts round her ready for another flight, 'It's greened aw yur neck and yur collar--luvely! Doan't yo benassty for nothink next time!'

And off she ran. 

'If yo meddle wi me ony moor, ' he shouted after her fiercely, 'yosee what I'll do!'

But in reality the male was helpless, as usual. He went ruefullydown to the brook, and loosening his shirt and coat tried to cleanhis neck and hair. Then, extremely sticky and uncomfortable, hewent back to his seat and his book, his wrathful eyes takingcareful note meanwhile of Louie's whereabouts. And thenceforward heread, as it were, on guard, looking up every other minute. 

Louie established herself some way up the further slope, in a steepstony nook, under two black boulders, which protected her rear incase of reprisals from David. Time passed away. David, on the otherside of the brook, revelling in the joys of battle, and all themore alive to them perhaps because of the watch kept on Louie byone section of his brain, was conscious of no length in theminutes. But Louie's mood gradually became one of extreme flatness. All her resources were for the moment at an end. She could think ofno fresh torment for David; besides, she knew that she wasobserved. She had destroyed all the scanty store of primroses alongthe brook; gathered rushes, begun to plait them, and thrown themaway; she had found a grouse's nest among the dead fern, and, contrary to the most solemn injunctions of uncle and keeper, enforced by the direst threats, had purloined and broken an egg;and still dinner-time delayed. Perhaps, too, the cold blightingwind, which soon made her look blue and pinched, tamed herinsensibly. At any rate, she got up after about an hour, and coollywalked across to David. 

He looked up at her with a quick frown. But she sat down, and, clasping her hands round her knees, while the primroses she hadstuck in her hat dangled over her defiant eyes, she looked at himwith a grinning composure. 

'Yo can read out if yo want to, ' she remarked. 

'Yo doan't deserve nowt, an I shan't, ' said David, shortly. 

'Then I'll tell Aunt Hannah about how yo let t' lambs stray lasstevenin, and about yor readin at neet. '

'Yo may tell her aw t' tallydiddles yo can think on, ' was theunpromising reply. 

Louie threw all the scorn possible into her forced smile, and then, dropping full-length into the heather, she began to sing at the topof a shrill, unpleasing voice, mainly, of course, for the sake ofharrying anyone in her neighbourhood who might wish to read. 

'Stop that squealing!' David commanded, peremptorily. WhereuponLouie sang louder than before. 

David looked round in a fury, but his fury was, apparently, instantly damped by the inward conviction, born of long experience, that he could do nothing to help himself. He sprang up, and thrusthis book into his pocket. 

'Nobory ull mak owt o' yo till yo get a bastin twice a day, wi anodd lick extra for Sundays, ' he remarked to her with grim emphasiswhen he had reached what seemed to him a safe distance. Then heturned and strode up the face of the hill, the dogs at his heels. Louie turned on her elbow, and threw such small stones as she coulddiscover among the heather after him, but they fell harmlesslyabout him, and did not answer their purpose of provoking him toturn round again. 

She observed that he was going up to the old smithy on the side ofKinder Low, and in a few minutes she got up and sauntered lazilyafter him. 

'T' owd smithy' had been the enchanted ground of David's childhood. It was a ruined building standing deep in heather, half-way up themountain-side, and ringed by scattered blocks and tabular slabs ofgrit. Here in times far remote--beyond the memory of even theoldest inhabitant--the millstones of the district, which gave theirname to the 'millstone grit' formation of the Peak, were fashioned. High up on the dark moorside stood what remained of the primitiveworkshop. The fire-marked stones of the hearth were plainlyvisible; deep in the heather near lay the broken jambs of thewindow; a stone doorway with its lintel was still standing; and onthe slope beneath it, hardly to be distinguished now from the greatprimaeval blocks out of which they had sprung and to which theywere fast returning, reposed two or three huge millstones. Perhapsthey bordered some ancient track, climbed by the millers of thepast when they came to this remote spot to give their orders; but, if so, the track had long since sunk out of sight in the heather, and no visible link remained to connect the history of this highand lonely place with that of those teeming valleys hidden to westand north among the moors, the dwellers wherein must once haveknown it well. From the old threshold the eye commanded awilderness of moors, rising wave-like one after another, from thegreen swell just below whereon stood Reuben Grieve's farm, to thefar-distant Alderley Edge. In the hollows between, dim tallchimneys veiled in mist and smoke showed the places of the cottontowns--of Hayfield, New Mills, Staleybridge, Stockport; while inthe far northwest, any gazer to whom the country-side spokefamiliarly might, in any ordinary clearness of weather, look forand find the eternal smoke-cloud of Manchester. 

So the deserted smithy stood as it were spectator for ever of thatyounger, busier England which wanted it no more. Human lifenotwithstanding had left on it some very recent traces. On thelintel of the ruined door two names were scratched deep into thewhitish under-grain of the black weather-beaten grit. The upper oneran: 'David Suveret Grieve, Sept. 15, 1863;' the lower, 'LouiseStephanie Grieve, Sept. 15, 1863. ' They were written in boldround-hand, and could be read at a considerable distance. Duringthe nine months they had been there, many a rustic passer-by hadbeen stopped by them, especially by the oddity of the name_Suveret_, which tormented the Derbyshire mouth. 

In a corner of the walls stood something more puzzling still--alarge iron pan, filled to the brim with water, and firmly bedded ona foundation of earth and stones. So still in general was theshining sheltered round, that the branches of the mountain ashwhich leant against the crumbling wall, the tufts of hard ferngrowing among the stones, the clouds which sailed overhead, wereall delicately mirrored in it. That pan was David Grieve's dearestpossession, and those reflections, so magical, and so alive, hadcontrived for him many a half-hour of almost breathless pleasure. He had carried it off from the refuse-yard of a foundry inthe valley, where he had a friend in one of the apprentices. The farm donkey and himself had dragged it thither on a certainnever-to-be-forgotten day, when Uncle Reuben had been on the otherside of the mountain at a shepherds' meeting in the Woodlands, while Aunt Hannah was safely up to her elbows in the washtub. Boy'sback and donkey's back had nearly broken under the task, but therethe pan stood at last, the delight of David's heart. In a creviceof the wall beside it, hidden jealously from the passer-by, lay theother half of that perpetual entertainment it provided--a store oftiny boats fashioned by David, and another friend, the lameminister of the 'Christian Brethren' congregation at Clough End, the small factory town just below Kinder, who was a sea-captain'sson, and with a knife and a bit of deal could fashion you any craftyou pleased. These boats David only brought out on rare occasions, very seldom admitting Louie to the show. But when he pleased theybecame fleets, and sailed for new continents. Here were the shipsof Captain Cook, there the ships of Columbus. On one side of thepan lay the Spanish main, on the other the islands of the SouthSeas. A certain tattered copy of the 'Royal Magazine, ' withpictures, which lay in Uncle Reuben's cupboard at home, providedall that for David was to be known of these names and places. Butfancy played pilot and led the way; she conjured up storms andislands and adventures; and as he hung over his pan high on theDerbyshire moor, the boy, like Sidney of old, 'sailed the seas wherethere was never sand'--the vast and viewless oceans of romance. 

CHAPTER II

Once safe in the smithy, David recovered his temper. If Louiefollowed him, which was probable, he would know better how to dealwith her here, with a wall at his back and a definite area todefend, than he did in the treacherous openness of the heath. However, just as he was settling himself down, with a sigh ofrelief, between the pan and the wall, he caught sight of somethingthrough one of the gaps of the old ruin which made him fling downhis book and run to the doorway. There, putting his fingers to hismouth, he blew a shrill whistle along the side of the Scout. A bentfigure on a distant path stopped at the sound. It was an old man, with a plaid hanging from his shoulders. He raised the stick heheld, and shook it in recognition of David's signal. Then resuminghis bowed walk, he came slowly on, followed by an old hound, whosegait seemed as feeble as his master's. 

David leant against the doorway waiting. Louie, meanwhile, waslounging in the heather just below him, having very soon caught himup. 

'What d'yo want 'im for?' she asked contemptuously, as thenew-comer approached: 'he'd owt to be in th' sylum. Aunt Hannah sayshe's gone that silly, he owt to be took up. '

'Well, he woan't be, then, ' retorted David. 'Theer's nobory about asull lay a finger on 'im. He doan't do her no harm, nor yo noather. Women foak and gells allus want to be wooryin soomthin. '

'Aunt Hannah says he lost his wits wi fuddlin, ' repeated Louieshrilly, striking straighter still for what she knew to be one ofDavid's tenderest points--his friendship for 'owd 'Lias Dawson, ' thequeer dreamer, who, fifteen years before, had been the schoolmasterof Frimley Moor End, and in local esteem 't' cliverest mon abeawtt'Peak. '

David with difficulty controlled a hot inclination to fall upon hissister once more. Instead, however, he affected not to hear her, and shouted a loud 'Good mornin' to the old man, who was toiling upthe knoll on which the smithy stood. 

'Lias responded feebly, panting hard the while. He sank down on astone outside the smithy, and for a while had neither breath norvoice. Then he began to look about him; his heaving chest subsided, and there was a rekindling of the strange blue eyes. He wore a highwhite stock and neckcloth; his plaid hung round his emaciatedshoulders with a certain antique dignity; his rusty wideawakecovered hair still abundant and even curly, but snow-white; theface, with its white eyebrows, was long, thin, and full of anascetic delicacy. 

'Wal, Davy, my lad, ' the old man said at last, with a sort ofpompous mildness; 'I winna blame yo for 't, but yo interrupted mesadly wi yur whistlin. I ha been occupied this day wi business o'_graat_ importance. His Majesty King Charles has been wi mesince seven o'clock this mornin. And for th' fust time I ha beengettin reet to th' _bottom_ o' things wi him. I ha been_probin_ him, Davy--probin him. He couldno riddle through wilees; I kept him to 't, as yo mun keep a horse to a jump--straightan tight. I had it aw out about Strafford, an t'Five Members, anthoose dirty dealins wi th' Irish devils! Yo should ha yerd it, Davy--yo should, I'll uphowd yo!'

And placing his stick between his knees, the old man leant hishands upon it, with a meditative and judicial air. The boy stoodlooking down at him, a broad smile lighting up the dark and vividface. Old 'Lias supplied him with a perpetual 'spectacle' whichnever palled. 

'Coe him back, 'Lias, he's soomwheer about. Yo need nobbut coe him, an he'll coom. '

'Lias looked fatuously pleased. He lifted his head and affected toscan the path along which he had just travelled. 

'Aye, I daur say he's not far. --Yor Majesty!'

And 'Lias laid his head on one side and listened. In a few secondsa cunning smile stole over his lips. 

'Wal, Davy, yo're in luck. He's noan so onwillin, we'st ha him herein a twinklin. Yo may coe him mony things, but yo conno coe himproud. Noa, as I've fund him, Charles Stuart has no soart o' prideabout him. Aye, theer yo are! Sir, your Majesty's obleeged anhumble servant!'

And, raising his hand to his hat, the old man took it off and sweptit round with a courtly deliberation. Then replacing it, he satwith his face raised, as though to one standing near, his wholeattitude full of a careful and pompous dignity. 

'Now then, yor Majesty, ' said 'Lias grimly, ' I'st ha to put thatquestion to yo, yance moor, yo wor noan so well pleased wi thismornin. But yo shouldno be soa tender, mon! Th' truth cando yo _noa_ harm, wheer yo are, an I'm nobbut askin for_informashun's_ sake. Soa out wi it; I'st not use it agen yo. _That--wee--bit--o'--damned--paper, _--man, what sent poorStrafford to his eend--yo mind it?--aye, _'at yo do!_ Well, now'--and the old man's tone grew gently seductive--_'explainyursel. _ We'n had _their_ tale, ' and he pointed away tosome imaginary accusers. 'But yo mun trust an Englishman's sense o'fair play. Say your say. We 'st gie yo a varra patient hearin. '

And with chin thrown up, and his half-blurred eyes blinking undertheir white lashes, 'Lias waited with a bland imperativeness for theanswer. 

'Eh?' said 'Lias at last, frowning and hollowing his hand to hisear. 

He listened another few seconds, then he dropped his hand sharply. 

'What's 'at yo're sayin?' he asked hastily; ''at yo couldno help it, not _whativer_--that i' truth yo had nothin to do wi't, nomoor than mysel--that yo wor _forcit_ to it--willy-nilly--bythem devils o' Parliament foak--by Mr. Pym and his loike, wi whom, if God-amighty ha' not reckoned since, theer's no moor justice i'His Kingdom than yo found i' yours?'

The words came out with a rush, tumbling over one another till theysuddenly broke off in a loud key of indignant scorn. Then 'Liasfell silent a moment, and slowly shook his head over the inveterateshuffling of the House of Stuart. 

''Twinna do, man--'twinna do, ' he said at last, with an air offine reproof. 'He wor your _friend_, wor that poor sinnerStrafford--your awn familiar friend, as t' Psalm says. I'm nottakin up a brief for him, t' Lord knows! He wor but meetin hisdeserts, to _my_ thinkin, when his yed went loupin. But yo puta black mark agen _yore_ name when yo signed that bit paperfor your awn skin's sake. Naw, naw, man, yo should ha lost your awnyed a bit sooner fust. Eh, it wor base--it wor cooardly!'

'Lias's voice dropped, and he fell muttering to himselfindistinctly. David, bending over him, could not make out whetherit was Charles or his interlocutor speaking, and began to be afraidthat the old man's performance was over before it had well begun. But on the contrary, 'Lias emerged with fresh energy from the gulfof inarticulate argument in which his poor wits seemed to have lostthemselves awhile. 

'But I'm no blamin yo awthegither, ' he cried, raising himself, witha protesting wave of the hand. 'Theer's naw mak o' mischief i' thisworld, but t' _women_ are at t' bottom o't. Whar's that proudfoo of a wife o' yourn? Send her here, man; send her here! 'LiasDawson ull mak her hear reason! Now, Davy!'

And the old man drew the lad to him with one hand, while he raiseda finger softly with the other. 

'Just study her, Davy, my lad, ' he said in an undertone, whichswelled louder as his excitement grew, 'theer she stan's, by t' sideo' t' King. She's a gay good-lookin female, that I'll confess to, but study her; look at her curls, Davy, an her paint, an hernakedness. For shame, madam! Goo hide that neck o' yourn, goo hideit, I say! An her faldaddles, an her jewles, an her ribbons. Isthat a woman--a French hizzy like that--to get a King out o'trooble, wha's awready lost aw t' wits he wor born wi?'

And with sparkling eyes and outstretched arm 'Lias pointed sternlyinto vacancy. Thrilled with involuntary awe the boy and girl lookedround them. For, in spite of herself, Louie had come closer, littleby little, and was now sitting cross-legged in front of 'Lias. ThenLouie's shrill voice broke in--

'Tell us what she's got on!' And the girl leant eagerly forward, her magnificent eyes kindling into interest. 

'What she's got on, my lassie? Eh, but I'm feart your yead, too, isfu' o' gauds!--Wal, it's but nateral to females. She's aw in whitesatin, my lassie, --an in her brown hair theer's pearls, an a blueribbon just howdin down t' little luve-locks on her forehead--an onher saft neck theer's pearls again--not soa white, by a thoosandmile, as her white skin--an t' lace fa's ower her proud shoothers, an down her luvely arms--an she looks at me wi her angry eyes--Eh, but she's a queen!' cried 'Lias, in a sudden outburst ofadmiration. 'She hath been a persecutor o' th' saints--a varraJeezebel--the Lord hath put her to shame--but she's moorsperrit--moor o't' blood o' kingship i' her little finger, norCharles theer in aw his body!'

And by a strange and crazy reversal of feeling, the old man sat ina kind of ecstasy, enamoured of his own creation, looking into thinair. As for Louie, during the description of the Queen's dress shehad drunk in every word with a greedy attention, her changing eyesfixed on the speaker's face. When he stopped, however, she drew along breath. 

'It's aw lees!' she said scornfully. 

'Howd your tongue, Louie!' cried David, angrily. 

But 'Lias took no notice. He was talking again very fast, butincoherently. Hampden, Pym, Fairfax, Falkland--the great namesclattered past every now and then, like horsemen, through a maze ofwords, but with no perceptible order or purpose. The phrasesconcerning them came to nothing; and though there were apparentlymany voices speaking, nothing intelligible could be made out. 

When next the mists cleared a little from the old visionary'sbrain, David gathered that Cromwell was close by, defending himselfwith difficulty, apparently, like Charles, against 'Lias'sassaults. In his youth and middle age--until, in fact, an event ofsome pathos and mystery had broken his life across, and cut him offfrom his profession--'Lias had been a zealous teacher and avoracious reader; and through the dreams of fifteen years thedidactic faculty had persisted and grown amazingly. He playedschoolmaster now to all the heroes of history. Whether it wereElizabeth wrangling with Mary Stuart, or Cromwell marshalling hisIronsides, or Buckingham falling under the assassin's dagger at'Lias's feet, or Napoleon walking restlessly up and down the deckof the 'Bellerophon, ' 'Lias rated them every one. He was lord of ashadow world, wherein he walked with kings and queens, warriors andpoets, putting them one and all superbly to rights. Yet so subtlewere the old man's wits, and so bright his fancy, even inderangement, that he preserved through it all a considerablemeasure of dramatic fitness. He gave his puppets a certain freedom;he let them state their case; and threw almost as much ingenuityinto the pleading of it as into the refuting of it. Of late, sincehe had made friends with Davy Grieve, he had contracted a curioushabit of weaving the boy into his visions. 

'Davy, what's your opinion o' that?' or, 'Davy, my lad, did yo iverhear sich clit-clat i' your life?' or again, 'Davy, yo'll not bemisled, surely, by sich a piece o' speshul-pleadin as that?'

So the appeals would run, and the boy, at first bewildered, andeven irritated by them, as by something which threw hindrances inthe way of the only dramatic entertainment the High Peak was likelyto afford him, had learnt at last to join in them with relish. Manymeetings with 'Lias on the moorside, which the old seer made alivefor both of them--the plundering of 'Lias's books, whence he haddrawn the brown 'Josephus' in his pocket--these had done morethan anything else to stock the boy's head with its presentstrange jumble of knowledge and ideas. _Knowledge_, indeed, itscarcely was, but rather the materials for a certain kind ofexcitement. 

'Wal, Davy, did yo hear that?' said 'Lias, presently, looking roundon the boy with a doubtful countenance, after Cromwell had given anunctuous and highly Biblical account of the slaughter at Droghedaand its reasons. 

'How mony did lie say he killed at that place?' asked the boysharply. 

'Thoosands, ' said Dawson, solemnly. 'Theer was naw mercy asked norgi'en. And those wha escaped knockin on t' yead were aw sold asslaves--every mon jock o' them!'

A strong light of anger showed itself in David's face. 

'Then he wor a cantin murderer! Yo mun tell him so! If I'd my way, he'd hang for 't!'

'Eh, laddie, they were nowt but rebels an Papists, ' said the oldman, complacently. 

'Don't yo becall Papists!' cried David, fiercely, facing round uponhim. 'My mither wor a Papist. '

A curious change of expression appeared on 'Lias's face. He put hishand behind his ear that he might hear better, turned a pair ofcunning eyes on David, while his lips pressed themselves together. 

'Your mither wor a Papist? an your feyther wor Sandy Grieve. Ay, ay--I've yeerd tell strange things o' Sandy Grieve's wife, ' he saidslowly. 

Suddenly Louie, who had been lying full length on her back in thesun, with her hat over her face, apparently asleep, sat boltupright. 

'Tell us what about her, ' she said imperiously. 

'Noa--noa, ' said the old man, shaking his head, while a sort offilm seemed to gather over the eyes, and the face and featuresrelaxed--fell, as it were, into their natural expression of weaksenility, which so long as he was under the stress of his favouriteillusions was hardly apparent. 'But it's true--it's varra true--I'veyeerd tell strange things about Sandy Grieve's wife. '

And still aimlessly shaking his head, he sat staring at theopposite side of the ravine, the lower jaw dropping a little. 

'He knows nowt about it, ' said David, roughly, the light of asombre, half-reluctant curiosity, which had arisen in his look, dying down. 

He threw himself on the grass by the dogs, and began teasing andplaying with them. Meanwhile Louie sat studying 'Lias with afrowning hostility, making faces at him now and then by way ofamusement. To disappoint the impetuous will embodied in that smallframe was to commit an offence of the first order. 

But one might as well make faces at a stone post as at old 'Liaswhen his wandering fit was on him. When the entertainment palled, Louie got up with a yawn, meaning to lounge back to the farm andinvestigate the nearness of dinner. But, as she turned, somethingcaught her attention. It was the gleam of a pool, far away beyondthe Downfall, on a projecting spur of the moor. 

'What d' yo coe that bit watter?' she asked David, suddenlypointing to it. 

David rolled himself round on his face, and took a look at thebluish patch on the heather. 

'It hasna got naw name, ' he said, at a venture. 

'Then yo're a stoopid, for it has, ' replied Louie, triumphantly. 'It's t' _Mermaid_ Pool. Theer wor a Manchester mon at Wigsons'last week, telling aw maks o' tales. Theer's a mermaid livesin 't--a woman, I tell tha, wi' a fish's tail--it's in a book, an he read it out, soa _theer_--an on Easter Eve neet she coomsout, and walks about t' Scout, combin her hair--an if onybody seesher an wishes for soomthin, they get it, sartin sure; an--'

'Mermaids is just faddle an nonsense, ' interrupted David, tersely. 

'Oh, is they? Then I spose books is faddle. Most on 'em are--t'kind of books yo like--I'll uphowd yo!'

'Oh, is they?' said David, mimicking her. 'Wal, I like 'em, yo see, aw t' same. I tell yo, mermaids is nonsense, cos I _know_ theyare. Theer was yan at Hayfield Fair, an the fellys they nearlysmashed t' booth down, cos they said it wor a cheat. Theer was justa gell, an they'd stuffed her into a fish's skin and sewed 'er up;an when yo went close yo could see t' stuffin runnin out of her. Antheer was a man as held 'er up by a wire roun her waist, an waggledher i' t' watter. But t' foak as had paid sixpence to coom in, theyjust took an tore down t' place, an they'd 'a dookt t' man an t'gell boath, if th' coonstable hadn't coom. Naw, mermaids is faddle, 'he repeated contemptuously. 

'Faddle?' repeated 'Lias, interrogatively. 

The children started. They has supposed 'Lias was of doting andtalking gibberish for the rest of the morning. But his tone wasbrisk and as David looked up he caught a queer flickeringbrightness in the old man's eye, which showed him that 'Lias wasonce more capable of furnishing amusement or information. 

'What do they coe that bit watter, 'Lias?' he inquired, pointing toit. 

'That bit watter?' repeated 'Lias, eyeing it. A sort of vaguetrouble came into his face, and his wrinkled hands lying on hisstick began to twitch nervously. 

'Aye--theer's a Manchester man been cramming Wigsons wi tales--sayshe gets 'em out of a book--'bout a woman 'at walks t' Scout EasterEve neet, --an a lot o' ninny-hommer's talk. Yo niver heer now aboutit--did yo, 'Lias?'

'Yes, yo did, Mr. Dawson--now, didn't yo?' said Louis, persuasively, enraged that David would never accept informationfrom her, while she was always expected to take it from him. 

'A woman--'at walks t' Scout, ' said 'Lias, uncertainly, flushing ashe spoke. 

Then, looking tremulously from his companions to the pool, he said, angrily raising his stick and shaking it at David, 'Davy, yo'retakin advantage--Davy, yo're doin what yo owt not. If my Margretwere here, she'd let yo know!'

The words rose into a cry of quavering passion. The children staredat him in amazement. But as Davy, aggrieved, was defending himself, the old man laid a violent hand on his arm and silenced him. Hiseyes, which were black and keen still in the blanched face, wereriveted on the gleaming pool. His features worked as though underthe stress of some possessing force; a shiver ran through theemaciated limbs. 

'Oh! yo want to know abeawt Jenny Crum's pool, do yo?' he said atlast in a low agitated voice. 'Nobbut look, my lad!--nobbut look!--an see for yoursen. '

He paused, his chest heaving, his eye fixed. Then, suddenly, hebroke out in a flood of passionate speech, still gripping David. 

'_Passon Maine! Passon Maine!_--ha yo got her, th' owd woman?Aye, aye--sure enough--'at's she--as yo're aw drivin aforeyo--hoontit like a wild beeast--wi her grey hair streamin, and herhands tied--Ah!'--and the old man gave a wild cry, which startledboth the children to their feet. 'Conno yo hear her?--eh, but it'senough to tear a body's heart out to hear an owd woman scream likethat!'

He stopped, trembling, and listened, his hand hollowed to his ear. Louie looked at her brother and laughed nervously; but her littlehard face had paled. David laid hold of her to keep her quiet, andshook himself free of 'Lias. But 'Lias took no notice of them nowat all, his changed seer's gaze saw nothing but the distance andthe pool. 

'Are yo quite _sure_ it wor her, Passon?' he went on, appealingly. 'She's nobbut owd, an it's a far cry fro her bitcottage to owd Needham's Farm. An th' chilt might ha deed, and t'cattle might ha strayed, and t' geyats might ha opened o'theirsels! Yo'll not dare to speak agen _that_. They _might_?Ay, ay, we aw know t' devil's strong; but she's eighty-one yearcoom Christmas--an an--. Doan't, _doan't_ let t' childer see, nor t' yoong gells! If yo let em see sich seets they'll breedyo wolves, not babes! Ah!'

And again 'Lias gave the same cry, and stood half risen, his handson his staff, looking. 

'What is it, 'Lias?' said David, eagerly; 'what is 't yo see?'

'Theer's my grandfeyther, ' said 'Lias, almost in a whisper, 'an owdNeedham an his two brithers, an yoong Jack Needham's woife--her aslosst her babby--an yoong lads an lasses fro Clough End, childerawmost, and t' coonstable, an Passon Maine--Ay--ay--yo've doon it!Yo've doon it! She'll mak naw moor mischeef neets--she's gay quietnow! T' watter's got her fasst enough!'

And, drawing himself up to his full height, the old man pointed aquivering finger at the pool. 

'Ay, it's got her--an your stones are tied fasst! Passon Maine saysshe's safe--that yo'll see her naw moor--While holly sticks begreen, While stone on Kinder Scoot be seen. 

But _I_ tell yo, Passon Maine _lees!_ I tell yo t' witch ull_walk_--t' witch ull _walk!_'

For several seconds 'Lias stood straining forward--out ofhimself--a tragic and impressive figure. Then, in a moment, fromthat distance his weird gift had been re-peopling, something elserose towards him--some hideous memory, as it seemed, of personalanguish, personal fear. The exalted seer's look vanished, thetension within gave way, the old man shrank together. He fell backheavily on the stone, hiding his face in his hands, and mutteringto himself. 

The children looked at each other oddly. Then David, half afraid, touched him. 

'What's t' matter, 'Lias? Are yo bad?'

The old man did not move. They caught some disjointed words, --'cold--ay, t' neet's cold, varra cold!'

''Lias!' shouted David. 

'Lias looked up startled, and shook his head feebly. 

'Are yo bad, 'Lias?'

'Ay!' said the old schoolmaster, in the voice of one speakingthrough a dream--'ay, varra bad, varra cold--I mun--lig me down--abit. '

And he rose feebly. David instinctively caught hold of him, and ledhim to a corner close by in the ruined walls, where the heather andbilberry grew thick up to the stones. 'Lias sank down, his head fellagainst the wall, and a light and restless sleep seemed to takepossession of him. 

David stood studying him, his hands in his pockets. Never in allhis experience of him had 'Lias gone through such a performance asthis. What on earth did it mean? There was more in it thanappeared, clearly. He would tell Margaret, 'Lias's old wife, whokept him and tended him like the apple of her eye. And he wouldfind out about the pool, anyway. _Jenny Crum's pool?_ What onearth did that mean? The name had never reached his ears before. Ofcourse Uncle Reuben would know. The boy eyed it curiously, thedetails of 'Lias's grim vision returning upon him. The wildcircling moor seemed suddenly to have gained a mysterious interest. 

'Didn't I tell yo he wor gone silly?' said Louie, triumphantly, athis elbow. 

'He's not gone that silly, onyways, but he can freeten littlegells, ' remarked David, dryly, instinctively putting out an arm, meanwhile, to prevent her disturbing the poor sleeper. 

'I worn't freetened, ' insisted Louie; '_yo_ were! He may skrikeaw day if he likes--for aw I care. He'll be runnin into hedgesby dayleet soon. Owd churn-yed!'

'Howd your clatterin tongue!' said David, angrily, pushing her outof the doorway. She lifted a loose sod of heather, which lay justoutside, flung it at him, and then took to her heels, and made forthe farm and dinner, with the speed of a wild goat. 

David brushed his clothes, took a stroll with the dogs, andrecovered his temper as best he might. When he came back, prickedby the state of his appetite, to see whether 'Lias had recoveredenough sanity to get home, he found the old man sitting up, lookingstrangely white and exhausted, and fumbling, in a dazed way, forthe tobacco to which he always resorted at moments of nervousfatigue. His good wife Margaret never sent him out without mendedclothes, spotless linen, and a paper of tobacco in his pocket. Hesat chewing it awhile in silence; David's remarks to him met withonly incoherent answers, and at last the schoolmaster got up andwith the help of his stick tottered off along the path by which hehad come. David's eyes followed the bent figure uneasily; nor didhe turn homeward till it disappeared over the brow. 

CHAPTER III

Anyone opening the door of Needham Farm kitchen that night at eightwould have found the inmates at supper--a meagre supper, whichshould, according to the rule of the house, have been eaten incomplete silence. Hannah Grieve, the children's aunt, and mistressof the farm, thought it an offence to talk at meals. She had notbeen so brought up. 

But Louie this evening was in a state of nerves. The afternoon hadseen one of those periodical struggles between her and Hannah, which did so much to keep life at Needham Farm from stagnating intoanything like comfort. The two combatants, however, must have takena certain joy in them, since they recurred with so much regularity. Hannah had won, of course, as the grim self-importance of herbearing amply showed. Louie had been forced to patch thehouse-linen as usual, mainly by the temporary confiscation of herSunday hat, the one piece of decent clothing she possessed, and towhich she clung with a feverish attachment--generally, indeed, sleeping with it beside her pillow. But, though she was beaten, shewas still seething with rebellion. Her eyes were red, but hershaggy head was thrown back defiantly, and there was hystericalbattle in the expression of her sharply-tilted nose and chin. 

'Mind yorsel, ' cried Hannah angrily, as the child put down herplate of porridge with a bang which made the housewife tremble forher crockery. 

'What's t' matter wi yo, Louie?' said Uncle Reuben, looking at herwith some discomfort. He had just finished the delivery of a longgrace, into which he had thrown much unction, and Louie's mannersmade but an ill-fitting Amen. 

'It's nasty!' said the child passionately. 'It's allusporridge--porridge--porridge--porridge--an I hate it--an it'sbitter--an it's a shame! I wish I wor at Wigson's--'at I do!'

Davy glanced up at his sister under his eyebrows. Hannah scannedher niece all over with a slow, observant scrutiny, as though shewere a dangerous animal that must be watched. Otherwise Louie mighthave spoken to the wall for all the effect she produced. Reuben, however, was more vulnerable. 

'What d' yo want to be at Wigson's for?' he asked. 'Yo shouldbe content wi your state o' life, Louie. It's a sin to bediscontented--I've tellt yo so many times. '

'They've got scones and rhubarb jam for tea!' cried the child, tumbling the news out as though she were bursting with it. 'Mrs. Wigson, she's allus makin em nice things. She's kind, she is--she'snice--she wouldn't make em eat stuff like this--she'd give it tothe pigs--'at she would!'

And all the time it was pitiful to see how the child was gobblingup her unpalatable food, evidently from the instinctive fear, nastyas it was, that it would be taken from her as a punishment for herbehaviour. 

'Now, Louie, yo're a silly gell, ' began Reuben, expostulating; butHannah interposed. 

'I wudn't advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to go wastin your breath onsich a minx. If I were yo, I'd keep it fur my awn eating. '

And she calmly put another slice of cold bacon on his plate, asthough reminding him of his proper business. Reuben fell silent andmunched his bacon, though he could not forbear studying his nieceevery now and then uncomfortably. He was a tall, large-boned man, with weakish eyes, sandy whiskers and beard, grown in a fringeround his long face, and a generally clumsy and disjointed air. Thetremulous, uncertain movements of his hand as he stretched it outfor one article of food after another seemed to express the man'scharacter. 

Louie went on gulping down her porridge. Her plate was just emptywhen Hannah caught a movement of Reuben's fork. He was in the actof furtively transferring to Louie a portion of bacon. But he couldnot restrain himself from looking at Hannah as he held out themorsel. Hannah's answering look was too much for him. The baconwent into his mouth. 

Supper over, Louie went out to sit on the steps, and Hannahcontemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Outin the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frostyApril night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew onthe girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her willalmost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of hermind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When wouldthey have their stupid prayers and let her get upstairs?

David meanwhile hung about the kitchen. He would have liked to askUncle Reuben about the pool and 'Lias's story, but Hannah wasbustling about, and he never mentioned 'Lias in her hearing. To doso would have been like handing over something weak, for which hehad a tenderness, to be worried. 

But he rummaged out an old paper-covered guide to the Peak, whichhe remembered to have been left at the farm one summer's day by apassing tourist, who paid Hannah handsomely for some bread andcheese. Turning to the part which concerned Clough End, Hayfield, and the Scout, he found:--

'In speaking of the Mermaiden's Pool, it may be remarked that thenatives of several little hamlets surrounding Kinder Scout havelong had a tradition that there is a beautiful woman--an EnglishHamadryad--lives in the side of the Scout; that she comes to batheevery day in the Mermaid's Well, and that the man who has the goodluck to behold her bathing will become immortal and never die. '

David shut the book and fell pondering, like many another wisermortal before him, on the discrepancies of evidence. What was aHamadryad? and why no mention of Easter Eve? and what had it all todo with the witch and Parson Maine and 'Lias's excitement?

Meanwhile, the thump made by the big family Bible as Hannahdeposited it on the table warned both him and the truant outsidethat prayer-time had come. Louie came in noisily when she wascalled, and both children lounged unwillingly into their appointedseats. 

Nothing but the impatience and indifference of childhood, however, could have grudged Reuben Grieve the half-hour which followed. During that one half-hour in the day, the mild, effaced man, whoseabsent-minded ways and complete lack of business faculty were theperpetual torment of his wife, was master of his house. While hewas rolling out the psalm, expounding the chapter, or 'wrestling'in prayer, he was a personality and an influence even for the wifewho, in spite of a dumb congruity of habit, regarded him generallyas incompetent and in the way. Reuben's religious sense was strongand deep, but some very natural and pathetically human instinctsentered also into his constant pleasure in this daily function. Hannah, with her strong and harsh features settled into repose, with her large hands, reddened by the day's work, lying idle in herlap, sat opposite to him in silence; for once she listened to him, whereas all day he had listened to her; and the moment made a dailyoasis in the life of a man who, in his own dull, peasant way, knewthat he was a failure, and knew also that no one was so well awareof it as his wife. 

With David and Louie the absorbing interest was generally to seewhether the prayer would be over before the eight-day clock strucknine, or whether the loud whirr which preceded that event would besuddenly and deafeningly let loose upon Uncle Reuben in the middleof his peroration, as sometimes happened when the speaker forgothimself. To-night that catastrophe was just avoided by a somewhatobvious hurry through the Lord's Prayer. When they rose from theirknees Hannah put away the Bible, the boy and girl raced each otherupstairs, and the elders were left alone. 

An hour passed away. Reuben was dozing peacefully in thechimney-corner; Aunt Hannah had just finished putting a patchon a pair of Reuben's trousers, was folding up her work andpreparing to rouse her slumbering companion, when a soundoverhead caught her ear. 

'What's that chilt at now?' she exclaimed angrily, getting up andlistening. 'She'd owt ta been in bed long ago. Soomthin mischeevous, I'll be bound. And lighting a dip beside her, she went upstairswith a treacherously quiet step. There was a sound of an openingdoor, and then Reuben downstairs was startled out of his snooze bya sudden gamut of angry cries, a scurrying of feet, and Hannahscolding loudly--

'Coom downstairs wi yo!--coom down an show your uncle what a figureo' foon yo'n been makkin o' yorsel! I'st teach yo to burn threecandles down awbut to nothink 'at yo may bedizen yorsel in thisway. Coom along wi yo. '

There was a scuffle on the stairs, and then Hannah burst open thedoor, dragging in an extraordinary figure indeed. Struggling andcrying in her aunt's grip was Louie. White trailing folds sweptbehind her; a white garment underneath, apparently her nightgown, was festooned with an old red-and-blue striped sash of some foreignmake. Round her neck hung a necklace of that gold filigree workwhich spreads from Genoa all along the Riviera; her magnificenthair hung in masses over her shoulders, crowned by the primroses ofthe morning, which had been hurriedly twisted into a wreath by abit of red ribbon rummaged out of some drawer of odds-and-ends;and her thin brown arms and hands appeared under the whitecloak--nothing but a sheet--which was being now trodden underfootin the child's passionate efforts to get away from her aunt. Tenminutes before she had been a happy queen flaunting over her atticfloor in a dream of joy before a broken, propped-up looking-glassunder the splendid illumination of three dips, long since secretedfor purposes of the kind. Now she was a bedraggled, tear-stainedFury, with a fierce humiliation and a boundless hatred glaring outof the eyes, which in Aunt Hannah's opinion were so big as to be'right down oogly. ' Poor Louie!

Uncle Reuben, startled from his snooze by this apparition, lookedat it with a sleepy bewilderment, and fumbled for his spectacles. 'Ay, yo'd better luke at her close, ' said Hannah, grimly, givingher niece a violent shake as she spoke; 'I wor set yo should justsee her fur yance at her antics. Yo say soomtimes I'm hard on her. Well, I'd ask ony pusson aloive if they'd put up wi this soart o'thing--dressin up like a bad hizzy that waaks t' streets, withree candles--_three_, I tell yo, Reuben--flarin away, and thecurtains close to, an nothink but the Lord's mussy keepin 'em fromcatchin. An she peacockin an gallivantin away enough to mak a catlaugh!'

And Aunt Hannah in her enraged scorn even undertook a grotesque andmincing imitation of the peacocking aforesaid. 'Let goo!' mutteredLouie between her shut teeth, and with a wild strength she at lastflung off her aunt and sprang for the door. But Hannah was tooquick for her and put her back against it. 'No--yo'll not goo tillyour ooncle there's gien yo a word. He _shan't_ say I'm hardon yo for nothink, yo good-for-nowt little powsement--he shall seeyo as yo are!'

And with the bitterness of a smouldering grievance, expressed inevery feature, Hannah looked peremptorily at her husband. He, poorman, was much perplexed. The hour of devotion was past, and outsideit he was not accustomed to be placed in important situations. 

'Louie--didn't yo know yo wor a bad gell to stay up and burn t'candles, an fret your aunt?' he said with a feeble solemnity, hislook fixed on the huddled white figure against the mahogany press. 

Louie stood with eyes resolutely cast down, and a forced smile, tremulous, but insolent to a degree, slowly lifting up the cornersof her mouth as Uncle Reuben addressed her. The tears were stillrunning off her face, but she meant her smile to convey theindomitable scorn for her tormentors which not even Aunt Hannahcould shake out of her. 

Hannah Grieve was exasperated by the child's expression. 

'Yo little sloot!' she said, seizing her by the arm again, andlosing her temper for good and all, 'yo've got your mither's badblude in yo--an it ull coom out, happen what may!'

'Hannah!' exclaimed Reuben, 'Hannah--mind yoursel. '

'My mither's _dead_, ' said the child, slowly raising her dark, burning eyes. 'My mither worn't bad; an if yo say she wor, yo're a_beast_ for sayin it! I wish it wor yo wor dead, an my mitherwor here instead o' yo!'

To convey the concentrated rage of this speech is impossible. Itseemed to Hannah that the child had the evil eye. Even she quailedunder it. 

'Go 'long wi yo, ' she said grimly, in a white heat, while sheopened the door--'an the less yo coom into _my_ way for t'future, the better. '

She pushed the child out and shut the door. 

'Yo _are_ hard on her, Hannah!' exclaimed Reuben, in hisperplexity--pricked, too, as usual in his conscience. 

The repetition of this parrot-cry, as it seemed to her, maddenedhis wife. 

'She's a wanton's brat, ' she said violently; 'an she's got t'wanton's blood. '

Reuben was silent. He was afraid of his wife in these moods. Hannahbegan, with trembling hands, to pick up the contents of herwork-basket, which had been overturned in the scuffle. 

Meanwhile Louie rushed upstairs, stumbling over and tearing herfinery, the convulsive sobs beginning again as soon as the tensionof her aunt's hated presence was removed. 

At the top she ran against something in the dark. It was David, whohad been hanging over the stairs, listening. But she flung pasthim. 

'What's t' matter, Louie?' he asked in a loud whisper through thedoor she shut in his face; 'what's th' owd crosspatch been slanginabout?'

But he got no answer, and he was afraid of being caught by AuntHannah if he forced his way in. So he went back to his own room, and closed, without latching, his door. He had had an inch of dipto go to bed with, and had spent that on reading. His book was abattered copy of 'Anson's Voyages, ' which also came from 'Lias'sstore, and he had been straining his eyes over it with enchantment. Then had come the sudden noise upstairs and down, and his candleand his pleasure had gone out together. The heavy footsteps of hisuncle and aunt ascending warned him to keep quiet. They turned intotheir room, and locked their door as their habit was. Davidnoiselessly opened his window and looked out. 

A clear moonlight reigned outside. He could distinguish the roundedshapes, the occasional movements of the sheep in their pen to theright of the farmyard. The trees in the field threw long shadowsdown the white slope; to his left was the cart-shed with its blackcaverns and recesses, and the branches of the apple-trees againstthe luminous sky. Owls were calling in the woods below; sometimes abell round the neck of one of the sheep tinkled a little, and theriver made a distant background of sound. 

The boy's heart grew heavy. After the noises in the Grieves' roomceased he listened for something which he knew must be in the air, and caught it--the sound of a child's long, smothered sobs. On mostnights they would not have made much impression on him. Louie'sways with her brother were no more engaging than with the rest ofthe world; and she was not a creature who invited consolation fromanybody. David, too, with his power of escape at any time into aworld of books and dreams or simply into the wild shepherd life ofthe moors, was often inclined to a vague irritation with Louie'sstate of perpetual revolt. The food was nasty, their clothes wereugly and scanty, Aunt Hannah was as hard as nails--at the same timeLouie was enough to put anybody's back up. What did she get by it?--that was his feeling; though, perhaps, he never shaped it. He hadnever felt much pity for her. She had a way of putting herself outof court, and he was, of course, too young to see her life or hisown as a whole. What their relationship might mean to him was stillvague--to be decided by the future. Whatever softness there was inthe boy was at this moment called out by other people--by old 'Liasand his wife; by Mr. Ancrum, the lame minister at Clough End; bythe dogs; hardly ever by Louie. He had grown used, moreover, to herperpetual explosions, and took them generally with a boy's naturalcallousness. 

But to-night her woes affected him as they had never done before. The sound of her sobbing, as he stood listening, gradually rousedin him an unbearable restlessness. An unaccountable depressionstole upon him--the reaction, perhaps, from a good deal of mentalexertion and excitement in the day. A sort of sick distaste awokein him for most of the incidents of existence--for Aunt Hannah, forUncle Reuben's incomprehensible prayers, for the thought of thelong Puritanical Sunday just coming. And, in addition, the lowvibrations of that distant sobbing stirred in him again, byassociation, certain memories which were like a clutch of physicalpain, and which the healthy young animal instinctively andpassionately avoided whenever it could. But to-night, in the darkand in solitude, there were no distractions, and as the boy put hishead down on his arms, rolling it from side to side as though toshake them off, the same old images pursued him--the lodging-houseroom, and the curtainless iron bed in which he slept with hisfather: reminiscences of some long, inexplicable anguish throughwhich that father had passed; then of his death, and his own lonelycrying. He seemed still to _feel_ the strange sheets in thatbed upstairs, where a compassionate fellow-lodger had put him thenight after his father died; he sat up again bewildered in the colddawn, filled with a home-sickness too benumbing for words. Heresented these memories, tried to banish them; but the nature onwhich they were impressed was deep and rich, and, once shaken, vibrated long. The boy trembled through and through. The more hewas ordinarily shed abroad, diffused in the life of sensation andboundless mental curiosity, the blacker were these rare moments ofself-consciousness, when all the world seemed pain, an iron vicewhich pinched and tortured him. 

At last he went to his door, pulled it gently open, and with barefeet went across to Louie's room, which he entered with infinitecaution. The moonlight was streaming in on the poor gauds, whichlay wildly scattered over the floor. David looked at them withamazement. Amongst them he saw something glittering. He picked itup, saw it was a gold necklace which had been his mother's, andcarefully put it on the little toilet table. 

Then he walked on to the bed. Louie was lying with her face turnedaway from him. A certain pause in the sobbing as he came near toldhim that she knew he was there. But it began again directly, beingindeed a physical relief which the child could not deny herself. Hestood beside her awkwardly. He could think of nothing to say. Buttimidly he stretched out his hand and laid the back of it againsther wet cheek. He half expected she would shake it off, but she didnot. It made him feel less lonely that she let it stay; the impulseto comfort had somehow brought himself comfort. He stood there, feeling very cold, thinking a whirlwind of thoughts about old'Lias, about the sheep, about Titus and Jerusalem, and aboutLouie's extraordinary proceedings--till suddenly it struck him thatLouie was not crying any more. He bent over her. The sobs hadchanged into the long breaths of sleep, and, gently drawing awayhis hand, he crept off to bed. 

CHAPTER IV

It was Sunday afternoon, still cold, nipping, and sunny. ReubenGrieve sat at the door of the farmhouse, his pipe in his hand, a'good book' on his knee. Beyond the wall which bounded the farmyardhe could hear occasional voices. The children were sitting there, he supposed. It gave him a sensation of pleasure once to hear ashrill laugh, which he knew was Louie's. For all this morning, through the long services in the 'Christian Brethren' chapel atClough End, and on the walk home, he had been once more pricked inhis conscience. Hannah and Louie were not on speaking terms. Atmeals the aunt assigned the child her coarse food without a word, and on the way to chapel and back there had been a stony silencebetween them. It was evident, even to his dull mind, that the girlwas white and thin, and that between her wild temper and mischiefand the mirth of other children there was a great difference. Moreover, certain passages in the chapel prayers that morninghad come home sharply to a mind whereof the only definite giftwas a true religious sensitiveness. The text of the sermonespecially--'Whoso loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, howshall he love God, whom he hath not seen?'--vibrated like anaccusing voice within him. As he sat in the doorway, with the sunstealing in upon him, the clock ticking loudly at his back, and thehens scratching round the steps, he began to think with muchdiscomfort about his dead brother and his brother's children. 

As to his memories of the past, they may perhaps be transformedhere into a short family history, with some details added whichhad no place in Reuben's mind. Twenty years before this presentdate Needham--once Needham's--Farm had been held by Reuben'sfather, a certain James Grieve. He had originally been a kind offarm-labourer on the Berwickshire border, who, driven southwards insearch of work by the stress of the bad years which followed thegreat war, had wandered on, taking a job of work here and anotherthere, and tramping many a score of weary miles between, till atlast in this remote Derbyshire valley he had found a finalanchorage. Needham Farm was then occupied by a young couple ofthe name of Pierson, beginning life under fairly prosperouscircumstances. James Grieve took service with them, and they valuedhis strong sinews and stern Calvinistic probity as they deserved. But he had hardly been two years on the farm when his youngemployer, dozing one winter evening on the shafts of his cartcoming back from Glossop market, fell off, was run over, andkilled. The widow, a young thing, nearly lost her senses withgrief, and James, a man of dour exterior and few words, set himselfto keep things going on the farm till she was able to look life inthe face again. Her sister came to be with her, and there, was achild born, which died. She was left better provided for than mostwomen of her class, and she had expectations from her parents. After the child's death, when the widow began to go about again, and James still managed all the work of the farm, the neighboursnaturally fell talking. James took no notice, and he was not a manto meddle with, either in a public-house or elsewhere. Butpresently a crop of suitors for the widow began to appear, and itbecame necessary also to settle the destiny of the farm. No oneoutside ever knew how it came about, for Jenny Pierson, who was asoft, prettyish creature, had given no particular sign; but oneSunday morning the banns of James Grieve, bachelor, and JennyPierson, widow, were suddenly given out in the Presbyterian chapelat Clough End, to the mingled astonishment and disgust of theneighbourhood. 

Years passed away. James held his own for a time with any farmer ofthe neighbourhood. But, by the irony of fate, the prosperity whichhis industry and tenacity deserved was filched from him little bylittle by the ill-health of his wife. She bore him two sons, Reubenand Alexander, and then she sank into a hopeless, fretful invalid, tormented by the internal ailment of which she ultimately died. Butthe small farmer who employs little or no labour is lost without anactive wife. If he has to pay for the milking of his cows, themaking of his butter, the cooking of his food, and the nursing ofhis children, his little margin of profit is soon eaten away; andwith the disappearance of this margin, existence becomes a blindstruggle. Even James Grieve, the man of iron will and indomitableindustry, was beaten at last in the unequal contest. The life atthe farm became bitter and tragic. Jenny grew more helpless andmore peevish year by year; James was not exactly unkind to her, buthe could not but revenge upon her in some degree that ruin of hissilent ambitions which her sickliness had brought upon him. 

The two sons grew up in the most depressing atmosphere conceivable. Reuben, who was to have the farm, developed a shy and hopelesstaciturnity under the pressure of the family chagrin andprivations, and found his only relief in the emotions andexcitements of Methodism. Sandy seemed at first more fortunate. An opening was found for him at Sheffield, where he was apprenticedto a rope-maker, a cousin of his mother's. This man died beforeSandy was more than halfway through his time, and the youth wentthrough a period of hardship and hand-to-mouth living which endedat last in the usual tramp to London. Here, after a period ofsemi-starvation, he found it impossible to get work at his owntrade, and finally drifted into carpentering and cabinet-making. The beginnings of this new line of life were incredibly difficult, owing to the jealousy of his fellow-workmen, who had properlyserved their time to the trade, and did not see why an interloperfrom another trade, without qualifications, should be allowed totake the bread out of their mouths. 

One of Sandy's first successes was in what was called a'shop-meeting, ' a gathering of all the employes of the firm heworked for, before whom the North-countryman pleaded to be allowedto earn his bread. The tall, finely grown, famished-looking ladspoke with a natural eloquence, and here and there with aBiblical force of phrase--the inheritance of his Scotch blood andtraining--which astonished and melted most of his hearers. He wasafterwards let alone, and even taught by the men about him, inreturn for 'drinks, ' which swallowed up sometimes as much as athird of his wages. 

After two or three years he was fully master of his trade, anadmirable workman, and a keen politician to boot. All this time hehad spent his evenings in self-education, buying books with everyspare penny, and turning specially to science and mathematics. Hisabilities presently drew the attention of the heads of theShoreditch firm for which he worked, and when the post of a foremanin a West-end shop, in which they were largely interested, fellvacant, it was their influence which put Sandy Grieve into thewell-paid and coveted post. He could hardly believe his own goodfortune. The letter in which he announced it to his father reachedthe farm just as the last phase of his mother's long martyrdom wasdeveloping. The pair, already old--James with work and anxiety, hiswife with sickness--read it together. They shut it up without aword. Its tone of jubilant hope seemed to have nothing to do withthem, or seemed rather to make their own narrowing prospects lookmore narrow, and the approach of the King of Terrors more black andrelentless, than before. Jenny lay back on her poor bed, with thetears of a dumb self-pity running down her cheeks, and James's onlyanswer to it was conveyed in a brief summons to Sandy to come andsee his mother before the end. The prosperous son, broadened out ofknowledge almost by good feeding and good clothes, arrived. Hebrought money, which was accepted without much thanks; but hismother treated him almost as a stranger, and the dour James, whilenot unwilling to draw out his account of himself, would look him upand down from under his bushy grey eyebrows, and often interposewith some sarcasm on his 'foine' ways of speaking, or his'gen'leman's cloos. ' Sandy was ill at ease. He was really anxiousto help, and his heart was touched by his mother's state; butperhaps there was a strain of self-importance in his manner, ahalf-conscious inclination to thank God that his life was not to beas theirs, which came out in spite of him, and dug a gulf betweenhim and them. Only his brother Reuben, dull, pious, affectionateReuben, took to him, and showed that patient and wonderingadmiration of the younger's cleverness, which probably Sandy hadreckoned on as his right from his parents also. 

On the last evening of his stay--he had luckily been able to makehis coming coincide with an Easter three days' holiday--he wassitting beside his mother in the dusk, thinking, with a reliefwhich every now and then roused in him a pang of shame, that infourteen or fifteen more hours he should be back in London, in theworld which made much of him and knew what a smart fellow he was, when his mother opened her eyes--so wide and blue they looked inher pinched, death-stricken face--and looked at him full. 

'Sandy!'

'Yes, mother!' he said, startled--for he had been sunk in his ownthoughts--and laying his hand on hers. 

'You should get a wife, Sandy. '

'Well, some day, mother, I suppose I shall, ' he said, with a changeof expression which the twilight concealed. 

She was silent a minute, then she began again, slow and feebly, butwith a strange clearness of articulation. 

'If she's sick, Sandy, _doan't grudge it her. _ Women 'ud diefasster iv they could. '

The whole story of the slow consuming bitterness of years spokethrough those fixed and filmy eyes. Her son gave a suddenirrepressible sob. There was a faint lightening in the littlewrinkled face, and the lips made a movement. He kissed her, and inthat last moment of consciousness the mother almost forgave him hisgood clothes and his superior airs. 

Poor Sandy! Looking to his after story, it seems strange that anyone should ever have felt him unbearably prosperous. About sixmonths after his mother's death he married a milliner's assistant, whom he met first in the pit of a theatre, and whom he was alreadycourting when his mother gave him the advice recorded. She wasFrench, from the neighbourhood of Arles, and of course a Catholic. She had come to London originally as lady's-maid to a Russianfamily settled at Nice. Shortly after their arrival, her mastershot his young wife for a supposed intrigue, and then put an end tohimself. Naturally the whole establishment was scattered, and thepretty Louise Suveret found herself alone, with a few pounds, inLondon. Thanks to the kind offices of the book-keeper in the hotelwhere they had been staying, she had been introduced to a millinerof repute in the Bond Street region, and the results of a trialgiven her, in which her natural Frenchwoman's gift and her acquiredskill came out triumphant, led to her being permanently engaged. Thenceforward her good spirits--which had been temporarilydepressed, not so much by her mistress's tragic ending as by herown unexpected discomfort--reappeared in all their nativeexuberance, and she proceeded to enjoy London. She defended herselffirst against the friendly book-keeper, who became troublesome, andhad to be treated with the most decided ingratitude. Then shegradually built herself up a store of clothes of the utmostelegance, which were the hopeless envy of the other girls employedat Madame Catherine's. And, finally, she looked about forserviceable acquaintances. 

One night, in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre, while 'The Lady ofLyons' was going on, Sandy Grieve found himself next to a dazzlingcreature, with fine black eyes, the smooth olive skin of the South, white teeth, and small dimpled hands, hardly spoilt at all by hertrade. She had with her a plain girl-companion, and her manner, though conscious and provocative, had that haughtiness, thatimplied readiness to take offence, which is the _grisette's_substitute for breeding. She was, however, affable to Sandy, whosebroad shoulders and handsome, well-to-do air attracted herattention. She allowed him to get her a programme, to beguile herinto conversation, and, finally, to offer her a cup of coffee. Afterwards he escorted the two to the door of their lodging, in oneof the streets off Theobald's Road, and walked home in a state ofexcitement which astonished him. 

This happened immediately before his visit to the farm and hismother's death. During the six months after that event Sandy knewthe 'joy of eventful living. ' He was establishing his own businessposition, and he was courting Louise Suveret with alternations ofdespair and flattered passion, which stirred the now burly, full-blooded North-countryman to his depths. She let him escort herto her work in the morning and take her home in the evening, andshe allowed him to give her as many presents of gloves, ribbons, bonbons--for which last she had a childish passion--and the like, as he pleased. But when he pressed her to marry him she generallylaughed at him. She was, in reality, observing her world, calculating her chances, and she had several other strings to herbow, as Sandy shrewdly suspected, though she never allowed hisjealousy any information to feed upon. It was simply owing to thefailure of the most promising of these other strings--a failurewhich roused in Louise one of those white heats of passionwhich made the chief flaw in her organisation, viewed as apleasure-procuring machine--that Sandy found his opportunity. In amoment of mortal chagrin and outraged vanity she consented to marryhim, and three weeks afterwards he was the blissful owner of theblack eyes, the small hands, the quick tongue, and the seductive_chiffons_ he had so long admired more or less at a distance. 

Their marriage lasted six years. At first Louise found somepleasure in arranging the little house Sandy had taken for herin a new suburb, and in making, wearing, and altering theadditional gowns which their joint earnings--for she still workedintermittently at her trade--allowed her to enjoy. After the firstinfatuation was a little cooled, Sandy discovered in her a paganismso unblushing that his own Scotch and Puritan instincts reacted ina sort of superstitious fear. It seemed impossible that GodAlmighty should long allow Himself to be flouted as Louise floutedHim. He found also that the sense of truth was almost non-existentin her, and her vanity, her greed of dress and admiration, was soconsuming, so frenzied, that his only hope of a peaceful life--ashe quickly realised--lay in ministering to it. Her will soon gotthe upper hand, and he sank into the patient servant of herpleasures, snatching feverishly at all she gave him in return withthe instinct of a man who, having sold his soul, is determined atleast to get the last farthing he can of the price. 

They had two children in four years--David Suveret and LouiseStephanie. Louise resented the advent of the second so intenselythat poor Sandy become conscious, before the child appeared, of afatal and appalling change in her relation to him. She had beenproud of her first-born--an unusually handsome and precociouschild--and had taken pleasure in dressing it and parading it beforethe eyes of the other mothers in their terrace, all of whom shepassionately despised. But Louie nearly died of neglect, and thetwo years that followed her birth were black indeed for Sandy. Hiswife, he knew, had begun to hate him; in business his energiesfailed him, and his employers cooled towards him as he grew visiblyless pushing and inventive. The little household got deeper anddeeper into debt, and towards the end of the time Louise wouldsometimes spend the whole day away from home without a word ofexplanation. So great was his nervous terror--strong, broad fellowthat he was--of that pent-up fury in her, which a touch might haveunloosed, that he never questioned her. At last the inevitable endcame. He got home one summer evening to find the house empty andransacked, the children--little things of five and two--sittingcrying in the desolate kitchen, and a crowd of loud-voiced, indignant neighbours round the door. To look for her would havebeen absurd. Louise was much too clever to disappear and leavetraces behind. Besides, he had no wish to find her. The hereditaryself in him accepted his disaster as representing the naturalretribution which the canny Divine vengeance keeps in store forthose who take to themselves wives of the daughters of Heth. Andthere was the sense, too, of emerging from something unclean, ofrecovering his manhood. 

He took his two children and went to lodgings in a decent streetnear the Gray's Inn Road. There for a year things went fairly wellwith him. His boy and girl, whom he paid a neighbour to look afterduring the day, made something to come home to. As he helped theboy, who was already at school, with his lesson for the next day, or fed Louie, perched on his knee, with the bits from his platedemanded by her covetous eyes and open mouth, he got back, littleby little, his self-respect. He returned, too, in the evenings tosome of his old pursuits, joined a Radical club near, and somescience lectures. He was aged and much more silent than of yore, but not unhappy; his employers, too, feeling that their man hadsomehow recovered himself, and hearing something of his history, were sorry for him, and showed it. 

Then one autumn evening a constable knocked at his door, and, coming in upon the astonished group of father and children, produced from his pocket a soaked and tattered letter, and showingSandy the address, asked if it was for him. Sandy, on seeing it, stood up, put down Louie, who, half undressed, had been having aride on his knee, and asked his visitor to come out on to thelanding. There he read the letter under the gas-lamp, and put itdeliberately into his pocket. 

'Where is she?' he asked. 

'In Lambeth mortuary, ' said the man briefly--'picked up two hoursago. Nothing else found on her but this. '

Half an hour afterwards Sandy stood by a slab in the mortuary, and, drawing back a sheet which covered the burden on it, stood face toface with his dead wife. The black brows were drawn, the smallhands clenched. What struck Sandy with peculiar horror was that onedelicate wrist was broken, having probably struck something infalling. She--who in life had rebelled so hotly against the leastshadow of physical pain! Thanks to the bandage which had beenpassed round it, the face was not much altered. She could not havebeen long in the water. Probably about the time when he was walkinghome from work, she--He felt himself suffocating--the barewhitewashed walls grew dim and wavering. 

The letter found upon her was the strangest appeal to his pity. Herseducer had apparently left her; she was in dire straits, and therewas, it seemed, no one but Sandy in all London on whose compassionshe could throw herself. She asked him, callously, for money totake her back to some Nice relations. They need only know what shechose to tell them, as she calmly pointed out, and, once in Nice, she could make a living. She would like to see her children, shesaid, before she left, but she supposed he would have to settlethat. How had she got his address? From his place of businessprobably, in some roundabout way. 

Then what had happened? Had she been seized with a suddenpersuasion that he would not answer, that it was all uselesstrouble; and in one of those accesses of blind rage by which herclear, sharp brain-life was at all times apt to be disturbed, hadshe rushed out to end it all at once and for ever? It made himforgive her that she _could_ have destroyed herself--couldhave faced that awful plunge--that icy water--that death-strugglefor breath. He gauged the misery she must have gone through by whathe knew of her sensuous love for comfort, for _bien-etre_. Hesaw her again as she had been that night at the theatre when theyfirst met, --the little crisp black curls on the temples, thedazzling eyes, the artificial pearls round the neck, the slighttraces of powder and rouge on brow and cheek, which made her allthe more attractive and tempting to his man's eye--the pretty foot, which he first noticed as she stepped from the threshold of thetheatre into the street. Nature had made all that, to bring herwork to this grim bed at last!

He himself died eighteen months afterwards. His acquaintances neverdreamt of connecting his death with his wife's, and the connection, if it existed, would have been difficult to trace. Still, if littleDavid could have put his experiences at this time into words, theymight have thrown some light on an event which was certainly asurprise to the small world which took an interest in Sandy Grieve. 

There was a certain sound which remained all through his lifefirmly fixed in David's memory, and which he never thought ofwithout a sense of desolation, a shiver of sick dismay, such asbelonged to no other association whatever. It was the sound of along sigh, brought up, as it seemed, from the very depths of being, and often, often repeated. The thought of it brought with it avision of a small bare room at night, with two iron bedsteads, onefor Louie, one for himself and his father; a bit of smoulderingfire in a tiny grate, and beside it a man's figure bowed over thewarmth, thrown out dark against the distempered wall, and sittingon there hour after hour; of a child, wakened intermittently by thelight, and tormented by the recurrent sound, till it had once moreburrowed into the bed-clothes deep enough to shut out everythingbut sleep. All these memories belonged to the time immediatelyfollowing on Louise's suicide. Probably, during the intervalbetween his wife's death and his own, Sandy suffered severely fromthe effects of strong nervous shock, coupled with a certain growthof religious melancholy, the conditions for which are rarelywanting in the true Calvinist blood. Owing to the privations andexposure of his early manhood, too, it is possible that he wasnever in reality the strong man he looked. At any rate, his fightfor his life when it came was a singularly weak one. The secondwinter after Louise's death was bitterly cold; he was overworked, and often without sleep. One bleak east-wind day struck home. Hetook to his bed with a chill, which turned to peritonitis; thesystem showed no power of resistance, and he died. 

On the day but one before he died, when the mortal pain was gone, but death was absolutely certain, he sent post-haste for hisbrother Reuben. Reuben he believed was married to a decent woman, and to Reuben he meant to commend his children. 

Reuben arrived, looking more bewildered and stupid than ever, purecountryman that he was, in this London which he had never seen. Sandy looked at him with a deep inward dissatisfaction. But whatcould he do? His marriage had cut him off from his old friends, andsince its wreck he had had no energy wherewith to make new ones. 

'I've never seen your wife, Reuben, ' he said, when they had talkedawhile. 

Reuben was silent a minute, apparently collecting his thoughts. 

'Naw, ' he said at last; 'naw. She sent yo her luve, and she hopes ivit's the Lord's will to tak yo, that it ull foind yo prepared. '

He said it like a lesson. A sort of nervous tremor and shrinkingoverspread Sandy's face. He had suffered so much through religionduring the last few months, that in this final moment of humanitythe soul had taken refuge in numbness--apathy. Let God decide. Hecould think it out no more; and in this utter feebleness his terrorof hell--the ineradicable deposit of childhood and inheritance--hadpassed away. He gathered his forces for the few human and practicalthings which remained to him to do. 

'Did she get on comfortable with father?' he asked, fixing Reubenwith his eyes, which had the penetration of death. 

Reuben looked discomposed, and cleared his throat once or twice. 

'Wal, it warn't what yo may call just coomfortable atween 'em. Naw, I'll not say it wor. '

'What was wrong?' demanded Sandy. 

Reuben fidgeted. 

'Wal, ' he said at last, throwing up his head in desperation, 'Ispose a woman likes her house to hersel when she's fust married. Hewor childish like, an mighty trooblesome times. An she's allusstirrin, and rootin, is Hannah. Udder foak mus look aloive too. '

The conflict in Reuben's mind between his innate truthfulness andhis desire to excuse his wife was curious to see. Sandy had avision of his father sitting in his dotage by his own hearth, andministered to by a daughter-in-law who grudged him his years andhis infirmities, as he had grudged his wife all the troublesomeincidents of her long decay. But it only affected him now as itbore upon what was still living in him, the one feeling which stillsurvived amid the wreck made by circumstance and disease. 

'Will she be kind to _them?_' he said sharply, which a motionof the head towards the children, first towards David, who satdrooping on his father's bed, where for some ten or twelve hoursnow he had remained glued, refusing to touch either breakfast ordinner, and then towards Louie, who was on the floor by the fire, with her rag dolls, which she was dressing up with smiles andchatter in a strange variety of finery. 'If not, she shan't have'em. There's time yet. '

But the grey hue was already on his cheek, his feet were alreadycold. The nurse in the far corner of the room, looking up as hespoke, gave him mentally 'an hour or two. '

Reuben flushed and sat bolt upright, his gnarled and wrinkled handstrembling on his knees. 

'She _shall_ be kind to 'em, ' he said with energy. 'Gie 'em tous, Sandy. Yo wouldna send your childer to strangers?'

The clannish instinct in Sandy responded. Besides, in spite of hislast assertion, he knew very well there was nothing else to bedone. 

'There's money, ' he said slowly. 'She'll not need to stint them ofanything. This is a poor place, ' for at the word 'money' he noticedthat Reuben's eyes travelled with an awakening shrewdness over thebarely furnished room; 'but it was the debts first, and then I hadto put by for the children. None of the shop-folk or the fellowsat the club ever came here. We lived as we liked. There's aninsurance, and there's some savings, and there's some commissionmoney owing from the firm, and there's a bit investment Mr. Gurney(naming the head partner) helped me into last year. There'saltogether about six hundred pound. You'll get the interest of itfor the children; it'll go into Gurneys', and they'll give five percent. For it. Mr. Gurney's been very kind. He came here yesterday, and he's got it all. You go to him. '

He stopped for weakness. Reuben's eyes were round. Six hundredpounds! Who'd have thought it of Sandy?--after that bad lot of awife, and he not thirty!

'An what d' yo want Davy to be, Sandy?'

'You must settle, ' said the father, with a long sigh. 'Depends onhim what he turns to. If he wants to farm, he can learn with you, and put in his money when he sees an opening. For the bit farms inour part there'd be enough. But I'm feeart'(the old Derbyshire wordslipped out unawares)'he'll not stay in the country. He's toosharp, and you mustn't force him. If you see he's not the farmingsort, when he's thirteen or fourteen or so, take Mr. Gurney'sadvice, and bind him to a trade. Mr. Gurney'll pay the premiums forhim and he can have the balance of the money--for I've left him tomanage it all, for himself and Louie too--when he's fit to set upfor himself. --You and Hannah'll deal honest wi 'em?'

The question was unexpected, and as he put it with a startlingenergy the dying man raised himself on his elbow, and lookedsharply at his brother. 

'D' yo think I'd cheat yo, or your childer, Sandy?' cried Reuben, flushing and pricked to the heart. 

Sandy sank back again, his sudden qualm appeased. 'No, ' he said, histhoughts returning painfully to his son. 'I'm feeart he'll not staywi you. He's cleverer than I ever was, and I was the cleverest ofus all. '

The words had in them a whole epic of human fate. Under the prickof them Reuben found a tongue, not now for his wife, but forhimself. 

'It's not cliverness as ull help yo now, Sandy, wi your Maaker! andyo feeace t' feeace wi 'un!' he cried. 'It's nowt but satisfacshunby t' blood o' Jesus!'

Sandy made no answer, unless, indeed, the poor heart within madeits last cry of agony to heaven at the words. The sinews of thespiritual as well as the physical man were all spent and useless. 

'Davy, ' he called presently. The child, who had been sittingmotionless during this talk watching his father, slid along the bedwith alacrity, and tucking his little legs and feet well away fromSandy's long frame, put his head down on the pillow. His fatherturned his eyes to him, and with a solemn, lingering gaze took inthe childish face, the thick, tumbled hair, the expression, sopiteous, yet so intelligent. Then he put up his own large hand, andtook both the boy's into its cold and feeble grasp. His eyelidsfell, and the breathing changed. The nurse hurriedly rose, liftedup Louie from her toys, and put her on the bed beside him. Thechild, disturbed in her play and frightened by she knew not what, set up a sudden cry. A tremor seemed to pass through the shut lidsat the sound, a slight compression of pain appeared in the greylips. It was Sandy Grieve's last sign of life. 

Reuben Grieve remembered well the letter he had written to hiswife, with infinite difficulty, from beside his brother's deadbody. He told her that he was bringing the children back with him. The poor bairns had got nobody in the world to look to but theiruncle and aunt. And they would not cost Hannah a penny. For Mr. Gurney would pay thirty pounds a year for their keep and bringingup. 

With what care and labour his clumsy fingers had penned that lastsentence so that Hannah might read it plain!

Afterwards he brought the children home. As he drove his light cartup the rough and lonely road to Needham Farm, Louie cried with thecold and the dark, and Davy, with his hands tucked between hisknees, grew ever more and more silent, his restless little headturning perpetually from side to side, as though he were trying todiscover something of the strange, new world to which he had beenbrought, through the gloom of the February evening. 

Then at the sound of wheels outside in the lane, the back door ofthe farm was opened, and a dark figure stood on the threshold. 

'Yo're late, ' Reuben heard. It was Hannah's piercing voice thatspoke. 'Bring 'em into t'back kitchen, an let 'em take their shoes offafore they coom ony further. '

By which Reuben knew that it had been scrubbing-day, and that herflagstones were more in Hannah's mind than the guests he hadbrought her. He obeyed, and then the barefooted trio entered thefront kitchen together. Hannah came forward and looked at thechildren--at David white and blinking--at the four-year-old Louie, bundled up in an old shawl, which dragged on the ground behind her, and staring wildly round her at the old low-roofed kitchen with theterror of the trapped bird. 

'Hannah, they're varra cold, ' said Reuben--'ha yo got summat hot?'

'Theer'll be supper bime-by, ' Hannah replied with decision. 'I'venaw time scrubbin-days to be foolin about wi things out o' hours. I've nobbut just got straight and cleaned mysel. They can sitdown and warm theirsels. I conno say they feature ony of _yor_belongins, Reuben. ' And she went to put Louie on the settle by thefire. But as the tall woman in black approached her, the child hitout madly with her small fists and burst into a loud howl ofcrying. 

'Get away, nasty woman! _Nasty_ woman--ugly woman! Take meaway--I want my daddy, --I want my daddy. ' And she threw herselfkicking on the floor, while, to Hannah's exasperation, a piece ofcrumbling bun she had been holding tight in her sticky little handescaped and littered all the new-washed stones. 

'Tak yor niece oop, Reuben, an mak her behave'--the mistress of thehouse commanded angrily. 'She'll want a stick takken to her, soon, _I_ can see. '

Reuben obeyed so far as he could, but Louie's shrieks only ceasedwhen, by the combined efforts of husband and wife, she had been putto bed, so exhausted with rage, excitement, and the journey, thatsleep mercifully took possession of her just after she hadperformed the crowning feat of knocking the tea and bread andbutter Reuben brought her out of her uncle's hand and all over theroom. 

Meanwhile, David sat perfectly still in a chair against the wall, beside the old clock, and stared about him; at the hams and bunchesof dried herbs hanging from the ceiling; at the chiffonnier, withits red baize doors under a brass trellis-work; at the high woodensettle, the framed funeral cards, and the two or three colouredprints, now brown with age, which Reuben had hung up twenty yearsbefore, to celebrate his marriage. Hannah was propitiated by theboy's silence, and as she got supper ready she once or twicenoticed his fine black eyes and his curly hair. 

'Yo can coom an get yor supper, ' she said to him, more graciouslythan she had spoken yet. 'It's a mussy yo doant goo skrikin likeyour sister. '

'Thank you, ma'am, ' said the little fellow, with a townsman'spoliteness, hardly understanding, however, a word of hernorth-country dialect--' I'm not hungry. --You've got a picture ofGeneral Washington there, ma'am;' and, raising a small handtrembling with nervousness and fatigue, he pointed to one of theprints opposite. 

'Wal, I niver, ' said Hannah, with a stare of astonishment. 'Yo're aquare lot--the two o' yer. '

One thing more Reuben remembered with some vividness in connectionwith the children's arrival. When they were both at lastasleep--Louie in an unused room at the back, on an old woodenbedstead, which stood solitary in a wilderness of bare boards;David in a sort of cupboard off the landing, which got most of itslight and air from a wooden trellis-work, overlooking thestaircase--Hannah said abruptly to her husband, as they two weregoing to bed, 'When ull Mr. Gurney pay that money?'

'Twice a year--so his clerk towd me--Christmas an Midsummer. Prapswe shan't want to use it aw, Hannah; praps we might save soom on itfor t' childer. Their keep, iv yo feed em on parritch, is nobbut afleabite, an they'n got a good stock o' cloos, Sandy's nurse towdme. '

He looked anxiously at Hannah. In his inmost heart there was apassionate wish to do his duty to Sandy's orphans, fighting with adread of his wife, which was the fruit of long habit andconstitutional weakness. 

Hannah faced round upon him. It was Reuben's misfortune thatdignity was at all times impossible to him. Now, as he sat in hisshirt-sleeves and stocking-feet, flushed with the exertion ofpulling off his heavy boots, the light of the tallow candle fallingon his weak eyes with their red rims, on his large open mouth withthe conspicuous gap in its front teeth, and his stubby hair, he wasmore than usually grotesque. 'As slamp an wobbly as an owdcorn-boggart, ' so his neighbours described him when they wished tobe disrespectful, and the simile fitted very closely with thedishevelled, disjointed appearance which was at all timescharacteristic of him, Sundays or weekdays. No one studying thepair, especially at such a moment as this--the _malaise_ ofthe husband--the wife towering above him, her grey hair hangingloose round her black brows and sallow face instinct with a ruggedand indomitable energy--could have doubted in whose hands lay thegovernment of Needham Farm. 

'I'll thank yo not to talk nonsense, Reuben Grieve, ' said his wifesharply. 'D'yo think they're _my_ flesh an blood, thoosechilder? An who'll ha to do for 'em but me, I should loike to know?Who'll ha to put up wi their messin an their dirt but _me_?Twenty year ha yo an I been married, Reuben, an niver tillthis neet did I ha to goo down on my knees an sweep oop afterscrubbin-day! Iv I'm to be moidered wi em, I'll be paid for 't. Soa I let yo know--it's little enough. '

And Hannah took her payment. As he sat in the sun, looking back onthe last seven years, with a slow and dreaming mind, Reubenrecognised, using his own phrases for the matter, that thechildren's thirty pounds had been the pivot of Hannah's existence. He was but a small sheep farmer, with very scanty capital. By dintof hard work and painful thrift, the childless pair had earned asufficient living in the past--nay, even put by a bit, if thetruth of Hannah's savings-bank deposits were known. But everyfluctuation in their small profits tried them sorely--triedHannah especially, whose temper was of the brooding and graspingorder. The _certainty_ of Mr. Gurney's cheques made them verysoon the most cheerful facts in the farm life. On two days in theyear--the 20th of June and the 20th of December--Reuben might besure of finding his wife in a good temper, and he had long shrewdlysuspected, without inquiring, that Hannah's savings-bank book, since the children came, had been very pleasant reading to her. 

Reuben fidgeted uncomfortably as he thought of those savings. Certainly the children had not cost what was paid for them. Hebegan to be oddly exercised this Sunday morning on the subject ofthe porridge Louie hated so much. Was it his fault or Hannah's ifthe frugal living which had been the rule for all the remoter farmsof the Peak--nay, for the whole north country--in his father'stime, and had been made doubly binding, as it were, on the dwellersin Needham Farm by James Grieve's Scotch blood and habits, hadsurvived under their roof, while all about them a more luxuriousstandard of food and comfort was beginning to obtain among theirneighbours? Where could you find a finer set of men than theBerwickshire hinds, of whom his father came, and who were reared on'parritch' from year's end to year's end?

And yet, all the same, Reuben's memory was full this morning ofdisturbing pictures of a little London child, full of towndaintiness and accustomed to the spoiling of an indulgent father, crying herself into fits over the new unpalatable food, refusing itday after day, till the sharp, wilful face had grown pale andpinched with famine, and caring no more apparently for her aunt'sbeatings than she did for the clumsy advances by which her unclewould sometimes try to propitiate her. There had been a great dealof beating--whenever Reuben thought of it he had a superstitiousway of putting Sandy out of his mind as much as possible. Manytimes he had gone far away from the house to avoid the sound of theblows and shrieks he was powerless to stop. 

Well, but what harm had come of it all? Louie was a strong lassnow, if she were a bit thin and overgrown. David was as fine a boyas anyone need wish to see. 

_David?_

Reuben got up from his seat at the farm door, took his pipe out ofhis pocket, and went to hang over the garden-gate, that he mightunravel some very worrying thoughts at a greater distance fromHannah. 

The day before he had been overtaken coming out of Clough End by Mr. Ancrum, the lame minister. He and Grieve liked one another. Ifthere had been intrigues raised against the minister within the'Christian Brethren' congregation, Reuben Grieve had taken no partin them. 

After some general conversation, Mr. Ancrum suddenly said, 'Will youlet me have a word with you, Mr. Grieve, about your nephewDavid--if you'll not think me intruding?'

'Say on, sir--say on, ' said Reuben hastily, but with an inwardshrinking. 

'Well, Mr. Grieve, you've got a remarkable boy there--a curious andremarkable boy. What are you going to do with him?'

'Do wi him?--me, sir? Wal, I doan't know as I've iver thowt michabout it, ' said Reuben, but with an agitation of manner that struckhis interrogator. 'He be varra useful to me on t' farm, Mr. Ancrum. Soom toimes i' t' year theer's a lot doin, yo knaw, sir, even on abit place like ours, and he ha gitten a good schoolin, he ha. '

The apologetic incoherence of the little speech was curious. Mr. Ancrum did not exactly know how to take his man. 

'I dare say he's useful. But he's not going to be the ordinarylabourer, Mr. Grieve--he's made of quite different stuff, and, if Imay say so, it will pay you very well to recognise it in good time. That boy will read books now which hardly any grown man of hisclass--about here, at any rate--would be able to read. Aye, andtalk about them, too, in a way to astonish you!'

'Yes, I know 'at he's oncommon cliver wi his books, is Davy, 'Reuben admitted. 

'Oh! it's not only that. But he's got an unusual brain and awonderful memory. And it would be a thousand pities if he were tomake nothing of them. You say he's useful, but--excuse me, Mr. Grieve--he seems to me to spend three parts of his time in loafingand desultory reading. He wants more teaching--he wants steadytraining. Why don't you send him to Manchester, ' said the ministerboldly, 'and apprentice him? It costs money, no doubt. '

And he looked interrogatively at Reuben. Reuben, however, saidnothing. They were toiling up the steep road from Clough End to thehigh farms under the Scout, a road which tried the minister'sinfirm limb severely; otherwise he would have taken more notice ofhis companion's awkward flush and evident discomposure. 

'But it would pay you in the long run, ' he said, when they stoppedto take breath; 'it would be a capital investment if the boy lives, I promise you that, Mr. Grieve. And he could carry on his educationthere, too, a bit--what with evening classes and lectures, and thedifferent libraries he could get the use of. It's wonderful how allthe facilities for working-class education have grown in Manchesterduring the last few years. '

'Aye, sir--I spose they have--I spose they have, ' said Reuben, uncomfortably, and then seemed incapable of carrying on theconversation any further. Mr. Ancrum talked, but nothing more wasto be got out of the farmer. At last the minister turned back, saying, as he shook hands, 'Well, let me know if I can be of anyuse. I have a good many friends in Manchester. I tell you that's aboy to be proud of, Mr. Grieve, a boy of promise, if ever there wasone. But he wants taking the right way. He's got plenty of mixedstuff in him, bad and good. I should feel it anxious work, the nextfew years, if he were my boy. '

Now it was really this talk which was fermenting in Reuben, andwhich, together with the 'rumpus' between Hannah and Louie, had ledto his singularly disturbed state of conscience this Sundaymorning. As he stood, miserably pulling at his pipe, the wholeprospect of sloping field, and steep distant moor, graduallyvanished from his eyes, and, instead, he saw the same London roomwhich David's memory held so tenaciously--he saw Sandy raisinghimself from his deathbed with that look of sudden distrust--'Now, you'll deal honest wi 'em, Reuben?'

Reuben groaned in spirit. 'A boy to be proud of' indeed. It seemedto him, now that he was perforce made to think about it, that hehad never been easy in his mind since Sandy's orphans came to thehouse. On the one hand, his wife had had her way--how was he toprevent it? On the other, his religious sense had kept pricking andtormenting--like the gadfly that it was. 

Who, in the name of fortune, was to ask Hannah for money to sendthe boy to Manchester and apprentice him? And who was going towrite to Mr. Gurney about it without her leave? Once upset thesystem of things on which those two half-yearly cheques depended, how many more of them would be forthcoming? And how was Hannahgoing to put up with the loss of them? It made Reuben shiver tothink of it. 

Shouts from the lane behind. Reuben suddenly raised himself andmade for the gate at the corner of the farmyard. He came out uponthe children, who had been to Sunday school at Clough End sincedinner, and were now in consequence in a state of restless animalspirits. Louie was swinging violently on the gate which barred thepath on to the moor. David was shying stones at a rook's nestopposite, the clatter of the outraged colony to which it belongedsounding as music in his ears. 

They stared when they saw Reuben cross the road, sit down on astone beside David, and take out his pipe. David ceased throwing, and Louie, crossing her feet and steadying herself as she sat onthe topmost bar of the gate by a grip on either side, leant hard onher hands and watched her uncle in silence. When caught unawares bytheir elders, these two had always something of the air of captivesdefending themselves in an alien country. 

'Wal, Davy, did tha have Mr. Ancrum in school?' began Reuben, affecting a brisk manner, oddly unlike him. 

'Naw. It wor Brother Winterbotham from Halifax, or soom sich name. '

'Wor he edifyin, Davy?'

'He wor--he wor--a leather-yed, ' said David, with sudden energy, and, taking up a stone again, he flung it at a tree trunk opposite, with a certain vindictiveness as though Brother Winterbotham weresitting there. 

'Now, yo're not speakin as yo owt, Davy, ' said Reuben reprovingly, as he puffed away at his pipe and felt the pleasantness of thespring sunshine which streamed down into the lane through the stillbare but budding branches of the sycamores. 

'He _wor_ a leather-yed, ' David repeated with emphasis. 'Hesaid it wor Alexander fought t' battle o' Marathon. '

Reuben was silent for a while. When tests of this kind were going, he could but lie low. However, David's answer, after a bit, suggested an opening to him. 

'Yo've a rare deal o' book-larnin for a farmin lad, Davy. If yo worat a trade now, or a mill-hand, or summat o' that soart, yo'd hanoan so mich time for readin as yo ha now. '

The boy looked at him askance, with his keen black eyes. His unclepuzzled him. 

'Wal, I'm not a mill-hand, onyways, ' he said, shortly, 'an I doan'tmean to be. '

'Noa, yo're too lazy, ' said Louie shrilly, from the top of thegate. 'Theer's heaps o' boys no bigger nor yo, arns their tenshillins a week. '

'They're welcome, ' said David laconically, throwing another stoneat the water to keep his hand in. For some years now the boy hadcherished a hatred of the mill-life on which Clough End and theother small towns and villages in the neighbourhood existed. Thethought of the long monotonous hours at the mules or the looms wasodious to the lad whose joys lay in free moorland wanderings withthe sheep, in endless reading, in talks with 'Lias Dawson. 

'Wal, now, I'm real glad to heer yo say sich things, Davy, lad, 'said Reuben, with a curious flutter of manner. 'I'm real glad. So yotake to the farmin, Davy? Wal, it's nateral. All yor forbears--allon em leastways, nobbut yor feyther--got their livin off t' land. It cooms nateral to a Grieve. '

The boy made no answer--did not commit himself in any way. He wenton absently throwing stones. 

'Why doan't he larn a trade?' demanded Louie. 'Theer's Harry Wigson, he's gone to Manchester to be prenticed. He doan't goo loafin roundaw day. '

Her sharp wits disconcerted Reuben. He looked anxiously at David. The boy coloured furiously, and cast an angry glance at his sister. 

'Theer's money wanted for prenticin, ' he said shortly. 

Reuben felt a stab. Neither of the children knew that theypossessed a penny. A blunt word of Hannah's first of all, about'not gien 'em ony high noshuns o' theirsels, ' aided on Reuben'sside by the natural secretiveness of the peasant in money affairs, had effectually concealed all knowledge of their own share in thefamily finances from the orphans. 

He reached out a soil-stained hand, shaking already with incipientage, and laid it on David's sleeve. 

'Art tha hankerin after a trade, lad?' he said hastily, nay, harshly. 

David looked at his uncle astonished. A hundred thoughts flewthrough the boy's mind. Then he raised his head and caught sight ofthe great peak of Kinder Low in the distance, beyond the greenswells of meadowland, --the heathery slopes running up into itsrocky breast, --the black patch on the brown, to the left, whichmarked the site of the smithy. 

'No, ' he said decidedly. 'No; I can't say as I am. I like t' farminwell enough. '

And then, boy-like, hating to be talked to about himself, he shookhimself free of his uncle and walked away. Reuben fell to his pipeagain with a beaming countenance. 

'Louie, my gell, ' he said. 

'Yes, ' said the child, not moving. 

'Coom yo heer, Louie. '

She unwillingly got down and came up to him. Reuben put down hispipe, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket. Out of it, withdifficulty, he produced a sixpence. 

'Art tha partial to goodies, Louie?' he said, dropping his voicealmost to a whisper, and holding up the coin before her. 

Louie nodded, her eyes glistening at the magnitude of the coin. Uncle Reuben might be counted on for a certain number of penniesduring the year, but silver was unheard of. 

'Tak it then, child, an welcome. If yo have a sweet tooth--an it'st' way wi moast gells--I conno see as it can be onythin else butProvidence as gave it yo. So get yorsel soom bull's-eyes, Louie, an--an'--he looked a little conscious as he slipped the coin intoher eager hand--'doan't let on ti your aunt! She'd think mebbe Iwor spoilin your teeth, or summat, --an, Louie--'

Was Uncle Reuben gone mad? For the first time in her life, as itseemed to Louie, he was looking at what she had on, nay, was eventaking up her dress between his finger and thumb. 

'Is thissen your Sunday frock, chilt?'

'Yes, ' said the girl, flushing scarlet, 'bean't it a dishclout?'

And she stood looking down at it with passionate scorn. It was aworn and patched garment of brown alpaca, made out of an ancientgown of Hannah's. 

'Wal, I'm naw judge i' these matters, ' said Reuben, dubiously, drawing out his spectacles. 'It's got naw holes 'at I can see, butit's not varra smart, perhaps. Satan's varra active wi gells onthis pint o' dress--yo mun tak noatice o' that, Louie--but--listenheer--'

And he drew her nearer to him by her skirt, looking cautiously upand down the lane and across to the farm. 

'If I get a good price for t' wool this year--an theer's a newmerchant coomin round, yan moor o' t' buyin soart nor owd Croker, soa they say, I'st save yo five shillin for a frock, chilt. Yo cangoo an buy it, an I'st mak it straight wi yor aunt. But I mun get agood price, yo know, or your aunt ull be fearfu' bad to manage. '

And he gazed up at her as though appealing to her common sense inthe matter, and to her understanding of both his and her situation. Louie's cheeks were red, her eyes did not meet his. They lookedaway, down towards Clough End. 

'Theer's a blue cotton at Hinton's, ' she said, hurriedly--'alight-blue cotton. They want sixpence farthin, --but Annie Wigsonsays yo could bate 'em a bit. But what's t' use?' she added, with asudden savage darkening of her bright look--'she'd tak it away. '

The tone gave Reuben a shock. But he did not rebuke it. For thefirst time he and Louie were conspirators in the same plot. 

'No, no, I'd see to 'at. But how ud yo get it made?' He wasbeginning to feel a childish interest in his scheme. 

'Me an Annie Wigson ud mak it oop fast enough. Theer are things Ican do for her; she'd not want no payin, an she's fearfu' good atdressmakin. She wor prenticed two years afore she took ill. '

'Gie me a kiss then, my gell; doan't yo gie naw trooble, an we'stsee. But I mun get a good price, yo know. '

And rising, Reuben bent towards his niece. She rose on tiptoe, andjust touched his rough cheek. There was no natural childisheffusiveness in the action. For the seven years since she left herfather, Louie had quite unlearnt kissing. 

Reuben proceeded up the lane to the gate leading to the moor. Hewas in the highest spirits. What a mercy he had not bothered Hannahwith Mr. Ancrum's remarks! Why, the boy wouldn't go to a trade, notif he were sent!

At the gate he ran against David, who came hastily out of thefarmyard to intercept him. 

'Uncle Reuben, what do they coe that bit watter up theer?' and hepointed up the lane towards the main ridge of the Peak. 'Yoknow--that bit pool on t' way to th' Downfall?'

The farmer stopped bewildered. 

'That bit watter? What they coe that bit watter? Why, they coe itt' Witch's Pool, or used to i' my yoong days. An for varra goodreason too. They drownded an owd witch theer i' my grand-feyther'stime--I've heerd my grandmither tell th' tale on't scores o' times. An theer's aw mak o' tales about it, or used to be. I hannot yeerdmony words about it o' late years. Who's been talkin to yo, Davy?'

Louie came running up and listened. 

'I doan't know, ' said the boy, --'what soart o' tales?'

'Why, they'd use to say th' witch walked, on soom neets i' th'year--Easter Eve, most pertickerlerly--an foak wor feeart to gooonywhere near it on those neets. But doan't yo goo listenin totales, Davy, ' said Reuben, with a paternal effusion most rare withhim, and born of his recent proceedings; 'yo'll only freeten yorselo' neets for nothin. '

'What are witches?' demanded Louie, scornfully. 'I doan't bleeve in'em. '

Reuben frowned a little. 

'Theer wor witches yance, my gell, becos it's in th' Bible, anwhativer's in th' Bible's _true_, ' and the farmer brought hishand down on the top bar of the gate. 'I'm no gien ony judgmentabout 'em nowadays. Theer wor aw mak o' queer things saidabout Jenny Crum an Needham Farm i' th' owd days. I've heerdmy grandmither say it worn't worth a Christian man's while tolive in Needham Farm when Jenny Crum wor about. She meddled wieverythin--wi his lambs, an his coos, an his childer. I niver seednothin mysel, so I doan't say nowt--not o' my awn knowledge. But Idoan't soomhow bleeve as it's th' Awmighty's will to freeten aChristian coontry wi witches, _i' th' present dispensation_. An murderin's a graat sin, wheder it's witches or oother foak, '

'In t' books they doan't coe it t' Witch's Pool at aw, ' said Louie, obstinately. 'They coe it t' _Mermaid's_ Pool. '

'An anoother book coes it a "Hammer-dry-ad, "' said David, mockingly, 'soa theer yo are. '

'Aye, soom faddlin kind of a name they gie it--I know--thoseManchester chaps, as cooms trespassin ower t' Scout wheer theyaren't wanted. To hear ony yan o' _them_ talk, yo'd thinktheer wor only three fellows like 'im cam ower i' three ships, antwo were drownded. T'aint ov ony account what they an their bookscoe it. '

And Reuben, as he leant against the gate, blew his smokecontemptuously in the air. It was not often that Reuben Grieveallowed himself, or was allowed by his world, to use airs ofsuperiority towards any other human being whatever. But in the caseof the Manchester clerks and warehousemen, who came tramping overthe grouse moors which Reuben rented for his sheep, and were alwaysbeing turned back by keepers or himself--and in their caseonly--did he exercise, once in a while, the commonest privilege ofhumanity. 

'Did yo iver know onybody 'at went up on Easter Eve?' asked David. 

Both children hung on the answer. 

Reuben scratched his head. The tales of Jenny Crum, once well knownto him, had sunk deep into the waves of memory of late years, andhis slow mind had some difficulty in recovering them. But at lasthe said with the sudden brightening of recollection:

'Aye--of _coorse!_--I knew theer wor soom one. Yo know 'im, Davy, owd 'Lias o' Frimley Moor? He wor allus a foo'hardy sort o'creetur. But if he wor short o' wits when he gan up, he wor michshorter when he cam down. That wor a rum skit!--now I think on 't. Sich a seet he wor! He came by here six o'clock i' th' mornin. Ifound him hangin ower t' yard gate theer, as white an slamp as apuddin cloth oop on eend; an I browt him in, an was for gien himsoom tay. An yor aunt, she gien him a warld o' good advice abouthis gooins on. But bless yo, he didn't tak in a word o' 't. An forth' tay, he'd naw sooner swallowed it than he runs out, as quick asleetnin, an browt it aw up. He wor fairly clemmed wi' t' cold, --'athe wor. I put in th' horse, an I took him down to t' Frimleycarrier, an we packed him i' soom rugs an straw, an soa he gothome. But they put him out o' t' school, an he wor months in hisbed. An they do tell me, as nobory can mak owt o' 'Lias Dawsonthese mony years, i' th' matter o' brains. Eh, but yo shudno meddlewi Satan. '

'What d'yo think he saw?' asked David, eagerly, his black eyes allaglow. 

'He saw t' woman wi t' fish's tail--'at's what he saw, ' said Louie, shrilly. 

Reuben took no notice. He was sunk in silent reverie poking at hispipe. In spite of his confidence in the Almighty's increasedgoodwill towards the present dispensation, he was not prepared tosay for certain what 'Lias Dawson did or didn't see. 

'Nobory should goo an meddle wi Satan, ' he repeated slowly after aninterval; and then opening the yard gate he went off on his usualSunday walk over the moors to have a look at his more distantsheep. 

Davy stood intently looking after him; so did Louie. She hadclasped her hands behind her head, her eyes were wide, her look andattitude all eagerness. She was putting two and two together--heruncle's promise and the mermaid story as the Manchester man haddelivered it. You had but to see her and wish, and, according tothe Manchester man and his book, you got your wish. The child'shatred of sermons and ministers had not touched her capacity forbelief of this sort in the least. She believed feverishly, and wasenraged with David for setting up a rival creed, and with her unclefor endorsing it. 

David turned and walked towards the farmyard. Louie followed him, and tapped him peremptorily on the arm. 'I'm gooin up theer EasterEve--Saturday week'--and she pointed over her shoulder to theScout. 

'Gells conno be out neets, ' said David firmly; 'if I goo I can tellyo. '

'Yo'll not goo without me--I'd tell Aunt Hannah!'

'Yo've naw moor sense nor rotten sticks!' said David, angrily. 'Yo'll get your death, an Aunt Hannah 'll be stick stock mad wiboath on us. If I goo she'll niver find out. '

Louie hesitated a moment. To provoke Aunt Hannah too much might, indeed, endanger the blue frock. But daring and curiositytriumphed. 

'I doan't care!' she said, tossing her head; 'I'm gooin. '

David slammed the yard gate, and, hiding himself in a corner of thecowhouse, fell into moody meditations. It took all the tragic andmysterious edge off an adventure he had set his heart on that Louieshould insist on going too. But there was no help for it. Next daythey planned it together. 

CHAPTER V

'Reuben, ha yo seen t' childer?' inquired Aunt Hannah, poking herhead round the door, so as to be heard by her husband, who wassitting outside cobbling at a bit of broken harness. 

'Noa; niver seed un since dinner. '

'They went down to Clough End, two o'clock about, for t' bread, anI've yerd nothin ov em since. Coom in to your tay, Reuben! I'llkeep nothin waitin for them! They may goo empty if they conno keeptime!'

Reuben went in. An hour later the husband and wife came outtogether, and stood looking down the steep road leading to thetown. 

'Just cast your eye on aw them stockins waitin to be mended, ' saidHannah, angrily, turning back to the kitchen, and pointing to achair piled with various garments. 'That's why she doon it, I spose. I'll be even wi her! It's a poor soart of a supper she'll get thisneet, or he noather. An her stomach aw she cares for!'

Reuben wandered down into the road, strolled up and down for nearlyan hour, while the sun set and the light waned, went as far as thecorner by Wigson's farm, asked a passer-by, saw and heard nothing, and came back, shaking his head in answer to his wife's shrillinterrogations. 

'Wal, if I doan't gie Louie a good smackin, ' ejaculated Hannah, exasperated; and she was just going back into the house when anexclamation from Reuben stopped her; instead, she ran out to him, holding on her cap against the east wind. 

'Look theer, ' he said, pointing; 'what iver is them two up to?'

For suddenly he had noticed outside the gate leading into the fielda basket lying on the ground against the wall. The two peered at itwith amazement, for it was their own basket, and in it reposed theloaves David had been told to bring back from Clough End, while onthe top lay a couple of cotton reels and a card of mending whichLouie had been instructed to buy for her aunt. 

After a moment Reuben looked up, his face working. 

'I'm thinkin, Hannah, they'n roon away!'

It seemed to him as he spoke that such a possibility had beenalways in his mind. And during the past week there had been muchbad blood between aunt and niece. Twice had the child gone to bedsupperless, and yesterday, for some impertinence, Hannah had givenher a blow, the marks of which on her cheek Reuben had watchedguiltily all day. At night he had dreamed of Sandy. Since Mr. Ancrum had set him thinking, and so stirred his conscience invarious indirect and unforeseen ways, Sandy had been a terror tohim; the dead man had gained a mysterious hold on the living. 

'Roon away!' repeated Hannah scornfully; 'whar ud they roon to?They're just at soom o' their divilments, 'at's what they are. An ifyo doan't tak a stick to boath on them when they coom back, _Iwill_, soa theer, Reuben Grieve. Yo niver had no sperrit wi'em--niver--and that's yan reason why they've grown up soa ramjamfull o' wickedness. '

It relieved her to abuse her husband. Reuben said nothing, but hungover the wall, straining his eyes into the gathering darkness. Thewooded sides of the great moor which enclosed the valley to thenorth were fading into dimness, and to the east, above the ridge ofKinder Low, a young moon was rising. The black steep wall of theScout was swiftly taking to itself that majesty which all mountainswin from the approach of night. Involuntarily, Reuben held hisbreath, listening, hungering for the sound of children's voices onthe still air. Nothing--but a few intermittent bird notes and theeternal hurry of water from the moorland to the plain. 

There was a step on the road, and a man passed whistling. 

'Jim Wigson!' shouted Hannah, 'is that yo, Jim?'

The man opened the yard gate, and came through to them. Jim was theeldest son of the neighbouring farmer, whose girls were Louie'sonly companions. He was a full-blooded swaggering youth, with whomDavid was generally on bad terms. David despised him for an oaf whocould neither read nor write, and hated him for a bully. 

He grinned when Hannah asked him questions about the truants. 

'Why, they're gone to Edale, th' yoong rascots, I'll uphowd yo!There's a parcel o' gipsies there tellin fortunes, an lots o' foakha gone ower there to-day. You may mak your mind up they've gone toEdale. That Louie's a limb, she is. She's got spunk enough to waakto Lunnon if she'd a mind. Oh, they'll be back here soon enough, trust 'em. '

I shut _my_ door at nine o'clock, ' said Hannah, grimly. 'Themas cooms after that, may sleep as they can. '

'Well, that'll be sharp wark for th' eyes if they're gone to Edale, 'said Jim, with a laugh. 'Its a good step fro here to Edale. '

'Aye, an soom o' 't bad ground, ' said Reuben uneasily--'vara badground. '

'Aye, it's not good walkin, neets. If they conno see their way whenthey get to the top o' t' Downfall, they'll stay theer till it getsmornin, if they've ony sort o' gumption. But, bless yo, it bean'tgooin to be a dark neet, '--and he pointed to the moon. 'They'll behere afore yoo goo to bed. An if yo want onybody to help yo gieDavy a bastin, just coo me, Mr. Grieve. Good neet to yo. '

Reuben fidgeted restlessly all the evening. Towards nine he wentout on the pretext of seeing to a cow that had lately calved andwas in a weakly state. He gave the animal her food and cleanlitter, doing everything more clumsily than usual. Then he wentinto the stable and groped about for a lantern that stood in thecorner. 

He found it, slipped through the farmyard into the lane, and thenlit it out of sight of the house. 

'It's bad ground top o' t' Downfall, ' he said to himself, apologetically, as he guiltily opened the gate on to themoor--'varra bad ground. '

Hanna shut her door that night neither at nine nor at ten. For bythe latter hour the master of the house was still absent, andnowhere to be found, in spite of repeated calls from the door andup the lane. Hannah guessed where he had gone without muchdifficulty; but her guess only raised her wrath to a white heat. Troublesome brats Sandy's children had always been--Louie moreespecially--but they had never perpetrated any such overt act ofrebellion as this before, and the dour, tyrannical woman was filledwith a kind of silent frenzy as she thought of her husband goingout to welcome the wanderers. 

'It's a quare kind o' fatted calf they'll get when _I_ layhands on 'em, ' she thought to herself as she stood at the frontdoor, in the cold darkness, listening. 

Meanwhile David and Louie, high up on the side of Kinder Scout, were speculating with a fearful joy as to what might be happeningat the farm. The manner of their escape had cost them much thought. Should they slip out of the front door instead of going to bed? Butthe woodwork of the farm was old and creaking, and the bolts andbars heavy. They were generally secured before supper by Hannahherself, and, though they might be surreptitiously oiled, thechildren despaired--considering how close the kitchen was to thefront door--of getting out without rousing Hannah's sharp ears. Other projects, in which windows and ropes played a part, werediscussed. David held strongly that he alone could have managed anyone of them, but he declined flatly to attempt them with a 'gell. 'In the same way he alone could have made his way up the Scout andover the river in the dark. But who'd try it with a 'gell'?

The boy's natural conviction of the uselessness of 'gells' wasnever more disagreeably expressed than on this occasion. But hecould not shake Louie off. She pinched him when he enraged herbeyond bounds, but she never wavered in her determination to gotoo. 

Finally they decided to brave Aunt Hannah and take theconsequences. They meant to be out all night in hiding, and in themorning they would come back and take their beatings. Davidcomfortably reflected that Uncle Reuben couldn't do him much harm, and, though Louie could hardly flatter herself so far, her tone, also, in the matter was philosophical. 

'Theer's soom bits o' owd books i' th' top-attic, ' she said toDavid; 'I'll leave 'em in t' stable, an when we coom home, I'll tie'em on my back--under my dress--an she may leather away tillChristmas. '

So on their return from Clough End with the bread--about fiveo'clock--they slipped into the field, crouching under the wall, soas to escape Hannah's observation, deposited their basket by thegate, took up a bundle and tin box which David had hidden thatmorning under the hedge, and, creeping back again into the road, passed noiselessly through the gate on to the moor, just as AuntHannah was lifting the kettle off the fire for tea. 

Then came a wild and leaping flight over the hill, down to the mainKinder stream, across it, and up the face of the Scout--up, and up, with smothered laughter, and tumbles and scratches at every step, and a glee of revolt and adventure swelling every vein. 

It was then a somewhat stormy afternoon, with alternate gusts ofwind and gleams of sun playing on the black boulders, the red-brownslopes of the mountain. The air was really cold and cutting, promising a frosty night. But the children took no notice of it. Up, and on, through the elastic carpet of heather and bilberry, andacross bogs which showed like veins of vivid green on the darksurface of the moor; under circling peewits, who fled before them, crying with plaintive shrillness to each other, as though inprotest; and past grouse-nests, whence the startled mothers soaredprecipitately with angry duckings, each leaving behind her a loosegathering of eggs lying wide and open on the heather, those newlylaid gleaming a brighter red beside their fellows. The tin box andits contents rattled under David's arm as he leapt and straddledacross the bogs, choosing always the widest jump and the stiffestbit of climb, out of sheer wantonness of life and energy. Louie'sthin figure, in its skimp cotton dress and red crossover, her longlegs in their blue worsted stockings, seemed to fly over the moor, winged, as it were, by an ecstasy of freedom. If one could but bein two places at once--on the Scout--and peeping from some safecorner at Aunt Hannah's wrath!

Presently they came to the shoulder whereon--gleaming under thelevel light--lay the Mermaid's Pool. David had sufficientlyverified the fact that the tarn did indeed bear this name in themodern guide-book parlance of the district. Young men and women, out on a holiday from the big towns near, and carrying little redor green 'guides, ' spoke of the 'Mermaid's Pool' with the accent ofromantic interest. But the boy had also discovered that nonative-born farmer or shepherd about had ever heard of the name, orwould have a word to say to it. And for the first time he hadstumbled full into the deep deposit of witch-lore and belief stillsurviving in the Kinder Scout district, as in all the remotermoorland of the North. Especially had he won the confidence of acertain 'owd Matt, ' a shepherd from a farm high on Mardale Moor;and the tales 'owd Matt' had told him--of mysterious hares coursedat night by angry farmers enraged by the 'bedivilment' of theirstock, shot at with silver slugs, and identified next morning withsome dreaded hag or other lying groaning and wounded in her bed--ofcalves' hearts burnt at midnight with awful ceremonies, while thebaffled witch outside flung herself in rage and agony against theclose-barred doors and windows--of spells and wise men--thesethings had sent chills of pleasing horror through the boy's frame. They were altogether new to him, in this vivid personal guise atleast, and mixed up with all the familiar names and places of thedistrict; for his childish life had been singularly solitary, giving to books the part which half a century ago would have beentaken by tradition; and, moreover, the witch-belief in general hadnow little foothold among the younger generation of the Scout, andwas only spoken of with reserve and discretion among the older men. 

But the stories once heard had struck deep into the lad's quick andpondering mind. Jenny Crum seemed to have been the latest of allthe great witches of Kinder Scout. The memory of her as a real andawful personage was still fresh in the mind of many a grey-hairedfarmer; the history of her death was well known; and most of thelocal inhabitants, even the boys and girls, turned out, when youcame to inquire, to be familiar with the later legends of the Pool, and, as David presently discovered, with one or more tales--for thestories were discrepant--of 'Lias Dawson's meeting with the witch, now fifteen years ago. 

'_What_ had 'Lias seen? What would they see?' His flesh creptdeliciously. 

'Wal, owd Mermaid!' shouted Louie, defiantly, as soon as she hadgot her breath again. 'Are yo coomin out to-night? Yo'll ha coompanyif yo do. '

David smiled contemptuously and did not condescend to argue. 

'Are yo coomin on?' he said, shouldering his box and bundle again. 'They'st be up after us if we doan't look out. '

And on they went, climbing a steep boulder-strewn slope above thepool till they came to the 'edge' itself, a tossed and brokenbattlement of stone, running along the top of the Scout. Here thegreat black slabs of grit were lying fantastically piled upon eachother at every angle and in every possible combination. The pathwhich leads from the Hayfield side across the desolate tableland ofthe Scout to the Snake Inn on the eastern side of the ridge, ranamong them, and many a wayfarer, benighted or mist-bound on themoor, had taken refuge before now in their caverns and recesses, waiting for the light, and dreading to find himself on the cliffsof the Downfall. 

But David pushed on past many hiding-places well known to him, tillthe two reached the point where the mountain face sweeps backwardin the curve of which the Downfall makes the centre. At the outwardedge of the curve a great buttress of ragged and jutting rocksdescends perpendicularly towards the valley, like a ruinedstaircase with displaced and gigantic steps. 

Down this David began to make his way, and Louie jumped, and slid, and swung after him, as lithe and sure-footed as a cat. PresentlyDavid stopped. 'This ull do, ' he said, surveying the place with acritical eye. 

They had just slid down a sloping chimney of rock, and were nowstanding on a flat block, over which hung another like a penthouseroof. On the side of the Downfall there was a projecting stone, onwhich David stepped out to look about him. 

Holding on to a rock above for precaution's sake, he reconnoitredtheir position. To his left was the black and semicircular cliff, down the centre of which the Downfall stream, now tamed and thinnedby the dry spring winds, was trickling. The course of the streamwas marked by a vivid orange colour, produced, apparently, in thegrit by the action of water; and about halfway down the fall a massof rock had recently slipped, leaving a bright scar, through whichone saw, as it were, the inner mass of the Peak, the rectangularblocks, now thick, now thin, as of some Cyclopean masonry, wherewith the earth-forces had built it up in days before a singlealp had yet risen on the face of Europe. Below the boy's feet aprecipice, which his projecting stone overhung, fell to the bed ofthe stream. On this side at least they were abundantly protected. 

On the moorside the steep broken ground of the hill came up to therocky line they had been descending, and offered no difficulty toany sure-footed person. But no path ran anywhere near them, andfrom the path up above they were screened by the grit 'edge'already spoken of. Moreover, their penthouse, or half-gable, hadtowards the Downfall a tolerably wide opening; but towards the moorand the north there was but a narrow hole, which David soon sawcould be stopped by a stone. When he crept back into theirhiding-place, it pleased him extremely. 

'They'll niver find us, if they look till next week!' he exclaimedexultantly, and, slipping off the heavy bundle strapped on hisback, he undid its contents. Two old woollen rugs appeared--one ablanket, the other a horse-rug--and wrapped up in the middle ofthem a jagged piece of tarpaulin, a hammer, some wooden pegs, andtwo or three pieces of tallow dip. Louie, sitting cross-legged inthe other corner, with her chin in her hands, looked on with herusual detached and critical air. David had not allowed her much ofa voice in the preparations, and she felt an instinctive aversiontowards other people's ingenuities. All she had contributed wassomething to while away the time, in the shape of a bag ofbull's-eyes, bought with some of the sixpence Uncle Reuben hadgiven her. 

Having laid out his stores, David went to work. Getting out on theprojecting stone again, he laid the bit of tarpaulin along thesloping edge of the rock which roofed them, pegged it down intocrevices at either end, and laid a stone to hold it in the middle. Then he slipped back again, and, behold, there was a curtainbetween them and the Downfall, which, as the dusk was fastadvancing, made the little den inside almost completely dark. 

'What's t' good o' that?' inquired Louie, scornfully, more thanhalf inclined to put out a mischievous hand and pull it down again. 

'Doan't worrit, an yo'll see, ' returned David, and Louie'scuriosity got the better of her malice. 

Stooping down beside her, he looked through the hole which openedto the moor. His eye travelled down the hillside to the path farbelow, just visible in the twilight to a practised eye, to theriver, to the pasture-fields on the hill beyond, and to the smoke, rising above the tops of some unseen trees, which marked the siteof the farmhouse. No one in sight. The boy crawled out, andsearched the moor till he found a large flattish stone, which hebrought and placed against the opening, ready to be drawn quiteacross it from inside. 

Then he slipped back again, and in the glimmer of light whichremained groped for his tin box. Louie stooped over and eagerlywatched him open it. Out came a bottle of milk, some large slicesof bread, some oatcake, and some cheese. In the corner, recklesslynear the cheese, lurked a grease-bespattered lantern and a box ofmatches. David had borrowed the lantern that afternoon from aClough End friend under the most solemn vows of secrecy, and hedrew it out now with a deliberate and special relish. When he haddriven a peg into a cranny of the rock, trimmed half a dipcarefully, lighted it, put it into the lantern, and hung thelantern on the peg, he fell back on his heels to study the effect, with a beaming countenance, filled all through with the essentiallyhuman joy of contrivance. 

'Now, then, d'yo see what that tarpaulin's for?' he inquiredtriumphantly of Louie. 

But Louie's mouth was conveniently occupied with a bull's-eye, andshe only sucked it the more vigorously in answer. 

'Why, yo little silly, if it worn't for that we couldno ha no leet. They'd see us from t' fields even, as soon as it's real dark. '

'Doan't bleeve it, ' said Louie, laconically, in a voice muchmuffled by bull's-eyes. 

'Wal, yo needn't; I'm gooin to have my tea. '

And David, diving into the tin, brought out a hunch of bread and aknob of cheese. The voracity with which he fell on them, soon, withhim also, stopped up the channels of speech. Louie, alarmed perhapsby the rapidity with which the mouthfuls disappeared, slid up onher heels and claimed her share. Never was there a more savourymeal than that! Their little den with its curtain felt warm for themoment after the keen air of the moor; the lantern light seemed toshut them in from the world, gave them the sense of settlerscarving a home out of the desert, and milk which had been filchedfrom Aunt Hannah lay like nectar in the mouth. 

After their meal both children crept out on to the moor to see whatmight be going on in the world outside. Darkness was fastadvancing. A rising wind swept through the dead bracken, whirledround the great grit boulders, and sent a shiver through Louie'sthin body. 

'It's cowd, ' she said pettishly; 'I'm gooin back. '

'Did yo spose it wor gooin to be warm, yo little silly? That's whyI browt t' rugs, of course. Gells never think o' nothin. It'sparishin cowd here, neets--fit to tie yo up in knots wi th'rheumatics, like Jim Spedding, if yo doan't mind yorsel. It woronly laying out a neet on Frimley Moor--poachin, I guess--'attwisted Jim that way. '

Louie's countenance fell. Jim Spedding was a little crookedgreengrocer in Clough End, of whom she had a horror. The bitinghostile wind, which obliged her to hold her hat on against it withboth hands, the black moor at their feet, the grey sweep of sky, the pale cloudy moon, the darkness which was fast envelopingthem--blotting out the distant waves of hill, and fusing the greatblocks of grit above them into one threatening mass--all thesebecame suddenly hateful to her. She went back into their den, wrapped herself up in one of the tattered rugs, and crept sulkilyinto a corner. The lantern gleamed on the child's huddled form, thefrowning brow, the great vixenish eyes. She had half a mind to runhome, in spite of Aunt Hannah. Hours to wait! and she loathedwaiting. 

But gradually, as the rug warmed her, the passion for adventure andmystery--the vision of the mermaid--the hope of the bluecotton--reasserted themselves, and the little sharp face relaxed. She began to amuse herself with hunting the spiders and beetleswhich ran across the rocky roof above her head, or crept in and outof the crevices of stone, wondering, no doubt, at this unbidden andtormenting daylight. She caught one or two small blackbeetles in adirty rag of a handkerchief--for she would not touch them if shecould help it--and then it delighted her to push aside the curtain, stretch her hand out into the void darkness, and let them fall intothe gulf below. Even if they could fly, she reflected, it must 'gie'em a good start. '

Meanwhile, David had charged up the hill, filled with a suddencuriosity to see what the top of the Scout might look like bynight. He made his way through the battlement of grit, found thelittle path behind, gleaming white in the moonlight, because of thequartz sheddings which wind and weather are forever teasing out ofthe grit, and which drift into the open spaces; and at last, guidedby the sound and the gleam of water, he made out the top of theDownfall, climbed a high peat bank, and the illimitable plateau ofthe Scout lay wide and vast before him. 

Here, on the mountain-top, there seemed to be more daylight leftthan on its rocky sides, and the moon among the parting cloudsshone intermittently over the primeval waste. The top of the Peakis, so to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses aregreat fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten feet deep, andwith ten feet more of black water at the bottom. For miles oneither side the ground is seamed and torn with these crevasses, nowshallower, now deeper, succeeding each other at intervals of a yardor two, and it is they which make the crossing of the Peak in thedark or in mist a matter of danger sometimes even for the native. David, high on his bank, from which the black overhanging eavescurled inwards beneath his feet to a sullen depth of water, couldsee against the moonlit sky the posts which marked the track fromthe Downfall to the Snake Inn on the Glossop Road. Miss thattrack--a matter of some fifteen minutes' walk for the sturdy farmerwho knows it well--and you find yourself lost in a region which hasno features and no landmarks, where the earth lays snares for youand the mists betray you, and where even in bright sunshine therereigns an eternal and indescribable melancholy. The strangeness andwildness of the scene entered the boy's consciousness, and broughtwith them a kind of exaltation. He stood gazing; that inner life ofhis, of which Louie, his constant companion, knew as good asnothing, asserting itself. 

For the real companions of his heart were not Louie or the boyswith whom he had joked and sparred at school; they were ideas, images, sounds, imaginations, caught from books or from the talk ofold 'Lias and Mr. Ancrum. He had but to stand still a moment, as itwere, to listen, and the voices and sights of another world cameout before him like players on to a stage. Spaces of shining water, crossed by ships with decks manned by heroes for whom the bluedistance was for ever revealing new lands to conquer, newadventures to affront; the plumed Indian in his forest divining thetrack of his enemy from a displaced leaf or twig; the Zealots ofJehovah urging a last frenzied defence of Jehovah's Sanctuaryagainst the Roman host; and now, last of all, the gloom and flames, the infernal palaces, the towering fiends, the grandiose andlumbering war of 'Paradise Lost': these things, together with thenames and suggestions of 'Lias's talk--that whole crew of shining, fighting, haranguing men and women whom the old dreamer was forever bringing into weird action on the moorside--lived in the boy'smind, and in any pause of silence, as we have said, emerged andtook possession. 

It was only that morning, in an old meal-chest which had belongedto his grandfather, James Grieve, he had discovered the oldcalf-bound copy of 'Paradise Lost, ' which was now in one of hispockets, balanced by 'Anson's Voyages' in the other. All themorning he had been lying hidden in a corner of the sheepfolddevouring it, the rolling verse imprinting itself on the boy'splastic memory by a sort of enchantment--

Yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void oflight, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts paleand dreadful. 

He chanted the words aloud, flinging them out in an ecstasyof pleasure. Before him, as it seemed, there stretched that veryplain 'forlorn and wild, ' with its black fissures and itsimpenetrable horizons; the fitful moonlight stood for theglimmering of the Tartarean flames; the remembered words and theactual sights played into and fused with each other, till in thecold and darkness the boy thrilled all through with that minglingof joy and terror which is only possible to the creature of finegifts and high imagination. 

Jenny Crum, too! A few more hours and he might see her face toface--as 'Lias had seen her. He quaked a little at the thought, buthe would not have flinched for the world. _He_ was not goingto lose his wits, as 'Lias did; and as for Louie, if she werefrightened it would do her good to be afraid of something. 

Hark! He turned, stooped, put his hand to his ear. 

The sound he heard had startled him, turned him pale. But he soonrecovered himself. It was the sound of heavy boots on stones, andit was brought to him by the wind, as it seemed, from far below. Some one was coming after them--perhaps more than one. He thoughthe heard a voice. 

He leapt fissure after fissure like a young roe, fled to the top ofthe Downfall and looked over. Did the light show through thetarpaulin? Alack!--there must be a rent somewhere--for he saw a dimglow-worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the mountain. It was invisible from below, but any roving eye from the top wouldbe caught by it in an instant. In a second he had raced along theedge, dived in and out of the blocks, guiding his way by a sort ofbat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stairway, which hedescended at imminent risk of his neck. 

'Put your hand ower t'leet, Louie, till I move t'stone!'

The light disappeared, David crept in, and the two childrencrouched together in a glow of excitement. 

'Is't Uncle Reuben?' whispered Louie, pressing her face against theside of the rocks, and trying to look through the chink between itand the covering stone. 

'Aye--wi a lantern. But there's talkin--theer's someone else. JimWigson, mebbe. '

'If it's Jim Wigson, ' said Louie, between her small, shut teeth, 'I'll bite him!'

'Cos yo're a gell! Gells and cats bite--they can't do nowt else!'

Whereupon Louie pinched him, and David, giving an involuntary kickas he felt the nip, went into first a fit of smothered laughter, and then seized her arm in a tight grip. 

'Keep quiet, conno yo? Now they're coomin, an I bleeve they'recoomin this way!'

But after another minute's waiting, he was quite unable to obey hisown injunction and he crept out on the stone overlooking theprecipice to look. 

'Coom back! They'll see yo. ' cried Louie, in a shrill whisper; andshe caught him by the ankle. 

David gave a kick. 'Let goo; if yo do 'at I shall fall an be kilt!'

She held her breath. Presently, with an exclamation, he knelt downand looked over the edge of the great sloping block which servedthem for roof. 

'Wal, I niver! Theer's nobory but Uncle Reuben, an he's talkin tohissel. Wal, this is a rum skit!'

And he stayed outside watching, in spite of Louie's angry commandsto him to come back into the den. David had no fears of beingdiscovered by Uncle Reuben. If it had been Jim Wigson it would havebeen different. 

Presently, on the path some sixty feet above them, but hidden fromthem by the mass of tumbled rocks through which they had descended, they heard someone puffing and blowing, a stick striking andslipping on the stones, and weird rays of light stole down themountain-side, and in and out of the vast blocks with which it wasoverstrewn. 

'He's stopt up theer, ' said David, creeping in under the gable, 'anI mun hear what he's sayin. I'm gooin up nearer. If yo coom we'llbe caught. '

'Yo stoopid!' cried Louie. But he had crawled up the narrow chimneythey had come down by in a moment, and she was left alone. Herspirit failed her a little. She daren't climb after him in thedark. 

David clambered in and out, the fierce wind that beat the side ofthe mountain masking whatever sounds he may have made, till hefound himself directly under the place where Reuben Grieve sat, slowly recovering his breath. 

_'O Lord! O Lord!_ They're aw reet, Sandy--they're aw reet!'

The boy crouched down sharply under an overhanging stone, arrestedby the name--Sandy--his father's name. 

Once or twice since he came to Kinder he had heard it on UncleReuben's lips, once or twice from neighbours who had known JamesGrieve's sons in their youth. But Sandy had left the farm early andwas little remembered, and the true story of Sandy's life wasunknown in the valley, though there were many rumours. What theclose and timid Reuben heard from Mr. Gurney, the head of Sandy'sfirm, after Sandy's death, he told to no one but Hannah. Thechildren knew generally, from what Hannah often let fall when shewas in a temper, that their mother was a disgrace to them, but theyknew no more, and, with the natural instinct of forlorn creatureson the defensive, studiously avoided the subject within the wallsof Needham Farm. They might question old 'Lias; they would suffermany things rather than question their uncle and aunt. 

But David especially had had many secret thoughts he could not putaway, of late, about his parents. And to hear his father's namedropped like this into the night moved the lad strangely. He layclose, listening with all his ears, expecting passionately, he knewnot what. 

But nothing came--or the wind carried it away. When he was rested, Reuben got up and began to move about with the lantern, apparentlythrowing its light from side to side. 

'David! Louie!'

The hoarse, weak voice, strained to its utmost pitch, died away onthe night wind, and a weird echo came back from the cliffs of theDownfall. 

There was no menace in the cry--rather a piteous entreaty. Thetruant below had a strange momentary impulse to answer--to disclosehimself. But it was soon past, and instead, he crept well out ofreach of the rays which flashed over the precipitous ground abouthim. As he did so he noticed the Mermaid's Pool, gleaming in a paleray of moonlight, some two hundred feet below. A sudden alarmseized him, lest Reuben should be caught by it, put two and twotogether and understand. 

But Reuben was absorbed in a discomfort, half moral, halfsuperstitious, and nothing else reached the slow brain--which wasbesides preoccupied by Jim Wigson's suggestion. After a bit hepicked up his stick and went on again. David, eagerly watching, tracked him along the path which follows the ridge, and saw thelight pause once more close to the Downfall. 

So far as the boy could see, his uncle made a long stay at a pointbeyond the stream, the bed of which was just discernible, as a sortof paler streak on the darkness. 

'Why, that's about whar th' Edale path cooms in, ' thought David, wondering. 'What ud he think we'd be doin theer?'

Faint sounds came to him in a lull of the wind, as though Reubenwere shouting again--shouting many times. Then the light wentwavering on, defining in its course the curved ridge of the furthermoor, till at last it made a long circuit downwards, disappearingfor a minute somewhere in the dark bosom of Kinder Low, aboutmidway between earth and sky. David guessed that Uncle Reuben mustbe searching the smithy. Then it descended rapidly, till finally itvanished behind the hill far below, which was just distinguishablein the cloudy moonshine. Uncle Reuben had gone home. 

David drew a long breath. But that patient quest in the dark--thetone of the farmer's call--that mysterious word _Sandy_, hadtouched the boy, made him restless. His mood grew a little flat, even a little remorseful. The joy of their great adventure ebbed alittle. 

However, he climbed down again to Louie, and found a dark elfishfigure standing outside their den, and dancing with excitement. 

'Wouldn't yo like to ketch us--wouldn't yo?--wouldn't yo?'screeched the child, beside herself. She too had been watching, hadseen the light vanish. 

'Yo'll have t' parish up after yo if yo doan't howd your tongue, 'said David roughly. 

And creeping into their den he relit the lantern. Then he pulledout a watch, borrowed from the same friend who had provided thelantern. Past nine. Two hours and more before they need think ofstarting downwards for the Pool. 

Louie condescended to come in again, and the stone was drawn close. But how fierce the wind had grown, and how nipping was the air!David shivered, and looked about for the rugs. He wrapt Louie inthe horse-rug, which was heaviest, and tucked the blanket roundhimself. 

'Howd that tight round yo, ' he commanded, struck with an uneasysense of responsibility, as he happened to notice how starved shelooked, 'an goo to sleep if yo want to. I'll wake yo--I'm gooin toread. '

Louie rolled the rug round her chrysalis-like, and then, disdainingthe rest of David's advice, sat bolt upright against the rock, herwide-open eyes staring defiantly at all within their ken. 

The minutes went by. David sat close up against the lantern, bitterly cold, but reading voraciously. At last, however, a sharpergust than usual made him look up and turn restive. Louie still satin the opposite corner as stiffly as before, but over the greatstaring eyes the lids had just fallen, sorely against their owner'swill; the head was dropping against the rock; the child was fastasleep. It occurred to David she looked odd; the face seemed sogrey and white. He instinctively took his own blanket and put itover her. The silence and helplessness of her sleep seemed toappeal to him, to change his mood towards her, for the action wasbrotherly and tender. Then he pushed the stone aside and crept outon to the moor. 

There he stood for a while, with his hands in his pockets, markingtime to warm himself. How the wind bit to be sure!--and it would becolder still by dawn. 

The pool showed dimly beneath him, and the gruesome hour wasstealing on them fast. His heart beat quick. The weirdness andloneliness of the night came home to him more than they had doneyet. The old woman dragged to her death, the hooting crowd, theinexorable parson, the struggle in the water, the last gurglingcry--the vision rose before him on the dark with an ever ghastlierplainness than a while ago on the mountain-top. _How_ had 'Liasseen her that the sight had changed him so? Did she come to himwith her drowned face and floating grey hair--grip him with hercold hands? David, beginning to thrill in good earnest, obstinatelyfilled in the picture with all the horrible detail he could thinkof, so as to harden himself. Only now he wished with all his heartthat Louie were safe at home. 

An idea occurred to him. He smiled at it, turned it over, graduallyresolved upon it. She would lead him a life afterward, but whatmatter?--let her!

From the far depths of the unseen valley a sound struck upwards, piercing through the noises of river and wind. It was the clock ofClough End church, tolling eleven. 

Well, one could not stand perishing there another hour. He stoopeddown and crawled in beside Louie. She was sleeping heavily, theadded warmth of David's blanket conducing thereto. He hung overher, watching her breathing with a merry look, which graduallybecame a broad grin. It was a real shame--she would be just madwhen she woke up. But mermaids were all stuff, and Jenny Crum would'skeer' her to death. Just in proportion as the adventure becamemore awesome and more real did the boy's better self awake. He grewsoft for his sister, while, as he proudly imagined, iron forhimself. 

He crept in under the blanket carefully so as not to disturb her. He was too tired and excited to read. He would think the hour out. So he lay staring at the opposite wall of rock, at its crevices, and creeping ants, at the odd lights and shadows thrown by thelantern, straining his eyes every now and then, that he might bethe more sure how wide awake they were. 

Louie stretched herself. What was the matter? Where was she? Whatwas that smell? She leant forward on her elbow. The lantern wasjust going out, and smelt intolerably. A cold grey light was in thelittle den. What? Where?

A loud wail broke the morning silence, and David, sleepingprofoundly, his open mouth just showing above the horse-rug, wasroused by a shower of blows from Louie's fists. He stirreduneasily, tried to escape them by plunging deeper into the folds, but they pursued him vindictively. 

'Give ower!' he said at last, striking back at random, and thensitting up he rubbed his eyes. There was Louie sitting opposite tohim, crying great tears of rage and pain, now rocking her ankle asif it hurt her, and now dealing cuffs at him. 

He hastily pulled out his watch. Half-past four o'clock!

'Yo great gonner, yo!' sobbed Louie, her eyes blazing at himthrough her tears. 'Yo good-for-nowt, yo muffin-yed, yo donkey!' Andso on through all the words of reviling known to the Derbyshirechild. David looked extremely sheepish under them. 

Then suddenly he put his head down on his knees and shook withlaughter. The absurdity of it all--of their preparations, of hisown terrors, of the disturbance they had made, all to end in thisflat and futile over-sleeping, seized upon him so that he could notcontrol himself. He laughed till he cried, while Louie hit andabused him and cried too. But her crying had a different note, andat last he looked up at her, sobered. 

'Howd your tongue!--an doan't keep bully-raggin like 'at! What's t'matter wi yo?'

For answer, she rolled over on the rock and lay on her face, howling with pain. David sprang up and bent over her. 

'What _iver's_ t' matter wi yo, Louie?'

But she kept him off like a wild cat, and he could make nothing ofher till her passion had spent itself and she was quiet again, fromsheer exhaustion. 

Then David, who had been standing near, shivering, with his handsin his pockets, tried again. 

'Now, Louie, do coom home, ' he said appealingly. 'I can find yo aplace in t' stable ull be warmer nor this. You be parished if yostay here. ' For, ignorant as he was, her looks began to frightenhim. 

Louie would have liked never to speak to him again. The thought ofthe blue cotton and of her own lost chance seemed to be burning ahole in her. But the stress of his miserable look drew her eyesopen whether she would or no, and when she saw him her self-pityovercame her. 

'I conno walk, ' she said, with a sudden loud sob. 'It's my leg. '

'What's wrong wi't?' said David, inspecting it anxiously. 'It's gotth' cowd in't, that's what it is; it's th' rheumatics, I speck. Yakhowd on me, I'll help yo down. '

And with much coaxing on his part and many cries and outbursts onhers he got her up at last, and out of the den. He had tied his tinbox across his back, and Louie, with the rugs wrapped about her, clung, limping, and with teeth chattering, on to his arm. The childwas in the first throes of a sharp attack of rheumatism, and halfher joints were painful. 

That was a humiliating descent! A cold grey morning was breakingover the moor; the chimneys of the distant cotton-towns rose out ofmists, under a sky streaked with windy cloud. The Mermaid's Pool, as they passed it, looked chill and mocking; and the worldaltogether felt so raw and lonely that David welcomed the firstsheep they came across with a leap of the heart, and positivelyhungered for a first sight of the farm. How he got Louie--in whosecheeks the fever-spots were rising--over the river he never quiteremembered. But at last he had dragged her up the hill, through thefields close to the house, where the lambs were huddling in thenipping dawn beside their mothers, and into the farmyard. 

The house rose before them grey and frowning. The lower windowswere shuttered; in the upper ones the blinds were pulled closelydown; not a sign of life anywhere. Yes; the dogs had heard them!Such a barking as began! Jock, in his kennel by the front door, nearly burst his chain in his joyful efforts to get at them; whileTib, jumping the half-door of the out-house in the back yard, wherehe had been curled up in a heap of bracken, leapt about them andbarked like mad. 

Louie sank down crying and deathly pale on a stone by the stabledoor. 

'They'll hear that fast enoof, ' said David, looking anxiously up atthe shut windows. 

But the dogs went on barking, and nothing happened. Ten minutes ofchilly waiting passed away. 

'Tak him away, _do!_' she cried, as Tib jumped up at her. 'No, I woan't!--I woan't!'

The last words rose to a shriek, as David tried to persuade her togo into the stable, and let him make her a bed in the straw. Hestood looking at her in despair. They had always supposed theywould be locked out; but surely the sleepers inside must hear thedogs. He turned and stared at the house, hungering for some sign oflife in it. Uncle Reuben would hear them--Uncle Reuben would letthem in!

But the blinds of the top room never budged. Louie, with her headagainst the stable-door, and her eyes shut, went on convulsivelysobbing, while Tibby sniffed about her for sympathy. And the bitterwind coming from the Scout whistled through the yard and seemed tocut the shivering child like a knife. 

'I'll mak a clunter agen th' window wi some gravel, ' said David atlast, in desperation. And he picked up a handful and threw it, first cautiously, then recklessly. Yes!--at last a hand moved theblind--a hand the children knew well, and a face appeared to oneside of it. Hannah Grieve had never looked so forbidding as at thatmoment. The boy caught one glance of a countenance pale with wrathand sleeplessness; of eyes that seemed to blaze at them through thewindow; then the blind fell. He waited breathlessly for minuteafter minute. Not a sound. 

Furiously he stooped for more gravel, and flung it again and again. For an age, as it seemed to him, no more notice was taken. At last, there was an agitation in the blind, as though more than one personwas behind it. It was Hannah who lifted it again; but David thoughthe caught a motion of her arm as though she were holding some oneelse back. The lad pointed excitedly to Louie. 

'She's took bad!' he shouted. 'Uncle Reuben!--Uncle Reuben!--coomdown an see for yorsel. If yo let her in, yo can keep me out aslong as yo like!'

Hannah looked at him, and at the figure huddled against thestable-door--looked deliberately, and then, as deliberately, pulledthe blind down lower than before, and not a sign of Reubenanywhere. 

A crimson flame sprang to David's cheek. He rushed at the door, andwhile with one hand he banged away at the old knocker, he thumpedwith the other, kicking lustily the while at the panels, tillLouie, almost forgetting her pains in the fierce excitement of themoment, thought he would kick them in. In the intervals of hisblows, David could hear voices inside in angry debate. 

'Uncle Reuben!' he shouted, stopping the noise for a moment, 'UncleReuben, Louie's turned sick! She's clemmed wi t' cold. If yo doan'topen th' door, I'll go across to Wigson's, and tell 'em as Louie'sparishin, an yo're bein th' death on her. '

The bolt shot back, and there stood Reuben, his red hair stickingup wildly from his head, his frame shaking with unusual excitement. 

'What are yo makin that roompus for, Davy?' began Reuben, withwould-be severity. 'Ha done wi yo, or I'll have to tak a stick toyo. '

But the boy stood akimbo on the steps, and the old farmer shrankbefore him, as David's black eye travelled past him to a gauntfigure on the stairs. 

'Yo'll tak noa stick to me, Uncle Reuben. I'll not put up wi it, and yo know it. I'm goin to bring Louie in. We've bin on t' moor byt' Pool lookin for th' owd witch, an we both on us fell asleep, anLouie's took the rheumatics. --Soa theer. --Stan out o' t' way. '

And running back to Louie, who cried out as he lifted her up, hehalf carried, half dragged her in. 

'Why, she's like death, ' cried Reuben. 'Hannah! summat hot--atwoonst. '

But Hannah did not move. She stood at the foot of the stairs, barring the way, the chill morning light falling on her threateningattitude, her grey dishevelled hair and all the squalid disarray ofher dress. 

'Them as doos like beggar's brats, ' she said grimly, 'may fare like'em. _I_'ll do nowt for 'em. '

The lad came up to her, his look all daring and resolution--hissister on his arm. But as he met the woman's expression, his lipstrembled, he suddenly broke down. 

'Now, look here, ' he cried, with a sob in his throat. 'I know we'rebeggar's brats. I know yo hate th' seet on us. But I wor t' worst. I'm t' biggest. Tak Louie in, and bully-rag me as mich as yo like. Louie--_Louie_!' and he hung over her in a frenzy, 'wake up, Louie!'

But the child was insensible. Fatigue, the excitement of thestruggle, the anguish of movement had done their work--she lay likea log upon his arm. 

'She's fainted, ' said Hannah, recognising the fact with a sort offierce reluctance. 'Tak her up, an doan't stan blatherin theer. '

And she moved out of the way. 

The boy gathered up the thin figure, and, stumbling over thetattered rugs, carried her up by a superhuman effort. 

Reuben leant against the passage wall, staring at his wife. 

'Yo're a hard woman, Hannah--a hard woman, ' he said to her underhis breath, in a low, shaken voice. 'An yo coed 'em beggar'sbrats--oh Lord--Lord!'

'Howd your tongue, an blow up t' fire, ' was all the reply shevouchsafed him, and Reuben obeyed. 

Meanwhile upstairs Louie had been laid on her bed. Consciousnesshad come back, and she was moaning. 

David stood beside her in utter despair. He thought she was goingto die, and he had done it. At last he sank down beside her, andflinging an arm round her, he laid his hot cheek to her icy one. 

'Louie, doan't--doan't--I'll tak yo away from here, Louie, when Ican. I'll tak care on yo, Louie. Doan't, Louie, --doan't!'

His whole being seemed rent asunder by sympathy and remorse. UncleReuben, coming up with some hot gruel, found him sitting on the bedbeside his sister, on whom he had heaped all the clothing he couldfind, the tears running down his cheeks. 

CHAPTER VI

From that night forward, David looked upon the farm and all hislife there with other eyes. 

Up till now, in spite of the perennial pressure of Hannah'styrannies, which, however, weighed much less upon him than uponLouie, he had been--as he had let Reuben see--happy enough. Theopen-air life, the animals, his books, out of all of them hemanaged to extract a very fair daily sum of enjoyment. And he hadbeen content enough with his daily tasks--herding the sheep, doingthe rough work of the stable and cow-house, running Aunt Hannah'serrands with the donkey-cart to Clough End, helping in thehaymaking and the sheep-shearing, or the driving of stock to andfrom the various markets Reuben frequented. All these things he haddone with a curious placidity, a detachment and yet readiness ofmind, as one who lends himself, without reluctance, to a life nothis own. It was this temper mainly, helped, no doubt, by hisunusual tastes and his share of foreign blood and looks, which hadset him apart from the other lads of his own class in theneighbourhood. He had few friends of his own age, yet he was notunpopular, except, perhaps, with an overbearing animal like JimWigson, who instinctively looked upon other people's brains as anoffence to his own muscular pretensions. 

But his Easter Eve struggle with Hannah closed, as it were, achildhood, which, though hard and loveless, had been full ofcompensations and ignorant of its own worst wants. It woke in himthe bitterness of the orphan dependant, who feels himself a burdenand loathes his dependence. That utter lack of the commonestnatural affection, in which he and Louie had been brought up--forReuben's timorous advances had done but little to redress thebalance--had not troubled him much, till suddenly it was writ somonstrous large in Hannah's refusal to take pity on the faintingand agonised Louie. Thenceforward every morsel of food he took ather hands seemed to go against him. They were paupers, and AuntHannah hated them. The fact had been always there, but it had nevermeant anything substantial to him till now. Now, at last, thatcomplete dearth of love, in which he had lived since his fatherdied, began to react in revolt and discontent. 

The crisis may have been long preparing, those words of his uncleas to his future, as well as the incident of their locking out, mayhave had something to say to it. Anyway, a new reflective temperset in. The young immature creature became self-conscious, began tofeel the ferments of growth. The ambition and the restlessness hisfather had foreseen, with dying eyes, began to stir. 

Reuben's qualms returned upon him. On the 15th of May, he and Davidwent to Woodhead, some sixteen or seventeen miles off, to receivethe young stock from the Yorkshire breeders, which were to begrazed on the farm during the summer. In general, David had takenthe liveliest interest in the animals, in the number and quality ofthem, in the tariff to be paid for them, and the long road thereand back had been cheered for the farmer by the lad's chatter, andby the athletic antics he was always playing with any handy gate ortree which crossed their path. 

'Them heifers ull want a deal o' grass puttin into 'em afoorthey'll be wuth onybody's buyin, Davy, ' said Reuben, inspecting hismixed herd with a critical eye from a roadside bank, as theyclimbed the first hill on their return journey. 

'Aye, they're a poor lot, ' returned David, shortly, and walked onas far in front of his uncle as might be, with his head in the airand his moody look fixed on the distance. 

'T' Wigsons ull be late gettin whoam, ' began Reuben again, with anuneasy look at the boy. 'Owd Wigson wor that full up wi yell when Ilast seed him they'll ha a job to get him started straight thisneet. '

To this remark David had nothing at all to say, though in generalhe had a keen neighbourly relish for the misdeeds of the Wigsons. Reuben did not know what to make of him. However, a mile further onhe made another attempt:

'Lord, how those Yorkshire breeders did talk! Yo'd ha thowt they'dthrow their jaws off the hinges. An a lot o' gimcrack notions asiver wor--wi their new foods, an their pills an strengtheningmixtures--messin wi cows as though they wor humans. Why conno theyleave God Awmighty alone? He can bring a calvin cow through beawtony o' their meddlin, I'll uphowd yo!'

But still not a word from the lad in front. Reuben might as wellhave talked to the wall beside him. He had grown used to the boy'scompanionship, and the obstinate silence which David stillpreserved from hour to hour as they drove their stock homewardsmade a sensible impression on him. 

Inside the house there was a constant, though in general a silent, struggle going on between the boy and Hannah on the subject ofLouie. Louie, after the escapade of Easter Eve, was visited with asharp attack of inflammatory rheumatism, only just stoppingshort of rheumatic fever. Hannah got a doctor, and tended hersufficiently while the worst lasted, partly because she was, afterall, no monster, but only a commonly sordid and hard-natured woman, and partly because for a day or two Louie's state set herpondering, perforce, what might be the effect on Mr. Gurney'sremittances if the child incontinently died. This thoughtundoubtedly quickened whatever natural instincts might be left inHannah Grieve; and the child had her doctor, and the doctor'sorders were more or less followed. 

But when she came downstairs again--a lanky, ghostly creature, muchgrown, her fierce black eyes more noticeable than ever in herpinched face--Hannah's appetite for 'snipin'--to use the expressiveDerbyshire word--returned upon her. The child was almost bulliedinto her bed again--or would have been if David had not found waysof preventing it. He realised for the first time that, as the youngand active male of the household, he was extremely necessary toHannah's convenience, and now whenever Hannah ill-treated Louie herconvenience suffered. David disappeared. Her errands were undone, the wood uncut, and coals and water had to be carried as they bestcould. As to reprisals, with a strong boy of fourteen, grown verynearly to a man's height, Hannah found herself a good deal at aloss. 'Bully-raggin' he took no more account of than of a shower ofrain; blows she instinctively felt it would have been dangerous toattempt; and as to deprivation of food, the lad seemed to thrive onhunger, and never whistled so loudly as when, according to Hannah'scalculations, he must have been as 'keen-bitten as a hawk. ' For thefirst time in her life Hannah was to some extent tamed. When therewas business about she generally felt it expedient to let Louiealone. 

But this sturdy protection was more really a matter of roused prideand irritation on David's part than of brotherly love. It was thetragedy of Louie Grieve's fate--whether as child or woman--that shewas not made to be loved. Whether _she_ could love, her storywill show; but to love her when you were close to her was alwayshard. How different the days would have been for the moody lad, whohad at last learnt to champion her, if their common isolation anddependence had but brought out in her towards him anythingclinging--anything confidential, any true spirit of comradeship! Onthe contrary, while she was still ill in bed, and almost absolutelydependent on what he might choose to do for her, she gibed andflouted him past bearing, mainly, no doubt, for the sake ofbreaking the tedium of her confinement a little. And when she wasabout again, and he was defending her weakness from Aunt Hannah, itseemed to him that she viewed his proceedings rather with amalicious than a grateful eye. It amused and excited her to see himstand up to Hannah, but he got little reward from her for hispains. 

She was, as it were, always watching him with a sort of secretdiscontent. He did not suit her--was not congenial to her. Especially was she exasperated now more than ever by his bookishtastes. Possibly she was doubly jealous of his books; at any rate, unless he had been constantly on his guard, she would have hiddenthem, or done them a mischief whenever she could, in her teasing, magpie way. 

One morning, in the grey summer dawn, Louie had just wakened, andwas staring sleepily at the door, when, all of a sudden, itopened--very quietly, as though pushed by some one anxious not tomake a noise--and Reuben's head looked round it. Louie, amazed, woke up in earnest, and Reuben came stealthily in. He had his hatand stick under his arm, and one hand held his boots, while hestepped noiselessly in his stocking feet across the room to whereLouie lay--'Louie, are yo awake?'

The child stared up at him, seeing mostly his stubble of red hair, which came like a grotesque halo between her and the wall. Then shenodded. 

'Doan't let yor aunt hear nothin, Louie. She thinks I'm gone out toth' calves. But, Louie, that merchant I towd yo on came yesterday, an he wor a hard un, he wor--as tough as nails, a sight worse norowd Croker to deal wi, ony day in th' week. I could mak nowt onhim--an he gan me sich a poor price. I darn't tak a penny on 'tfrom your aunt--noa, I darn't, Louie, --not if it wor iver so. She'll be reet down mad when she knaws--an I'm real sorry aboutthat bit dress o' yourn, Louie. '

He stood looking down at her, his spectacles falling forward on hisnose, the corners of his mouth drooping--a big ungainly culprit. 

For a second or two the child was quite still, nothing but theblack eyes and tossed masses of hair showing above the sheet. Thenthe eyes blinked suddenly, and flinging out her hand at him with apassionate gesture, as though to push him away, she turned on herface and drew the bedclothes over her head. 

'Louie!' he said--'Louie!'

But she made no sign, and, at last, with a grotesquely concernedface, he went out of the room and downstairs, hanging his head. 

Out of doors, he found David already at work in the cowhouse, butas surly and uncommunicative as before when he was spoken to. Thatthe lad had turned 'agen his wark, ' and was on his way to hate thefarm and all it contained, was plain even to Reuben. Why was he soglum and silent--why didn't he speak up? Perhaps he would, Reuben'sconscience replied, if it were conveyed to him that he possessed asubstantial portion of six hundred pounds!

The boy knew that his uncle watched him--anxiously, as one watchessomething explosive and incalculable--and felt a sort of contemptfor himself that nothing practical came of his own revolt anddiscontent. But he was torn with indecision. How to leaveLouie--what to do with himself without a farthing in theworld--whom to go to for advice? He thought often of Mr. Ancrum, but a fierce distaste for chapels and ministers had been growing onhim, and he had gradually seen less and less of the man who hadbeen the kind comrade and teacher of his early childhood. His onlyreal companions during this year of moody adolescence were hisbooks. From the forgotten deposit in the old meal-ark upstairs, which had yielded 'Paradise Lost, ' he drew other treasures bydegrees. He found there, in all, some tattered leaves--three orfour books altogether--of Pope's 'Iliad, ' about half of Foxe's'Martyrs'--the rest having been used apparently by the casualnurses, who came to tend Reuben's poor mother in her last days, to light the fire--a complete copy of Locke 'On the HumanUnderstanding, ' and various volumes of old Calvinist sermons, whichhe read, partly because his reading appetite was insatiable, partlyfrom a half-contemptuous desire to find out what it might be thatUncle Reuben was always troubling his head about. 

As to 'Lias Dawson, David saw nothing of him for many long weeksafter the scene which had led to the adventure of the Pool. Heheard only that 'Lias was 'bad, ' and mostly in his bed, and feelinga little guilty, he hardly knew why, the lad kept away from his oldfriend. 

Summer and the early autumn passed away. October brought a spell ofwintry weather; and one day, as he was bringing the sheep home, hemet old Margaret, 'Lias's wife. She stopped and accosted him. 

'Why doan't yo coom and see 'Lias sometimes, Davy, my lad? Yo mightleeten him up a bit, an' he wants it, t' Lord knows. He's beenfearfu' bad in his sperrits this summer. '

The lad stammered out some sheepish excuses, and soon made his wayover to Frimley Moor. But the visits were not so much pleasure asusual. 'Lias was very feeble, and David had a constant temptation tostruggle with. He understood that to excite 'Lias, to throw himagain into the frenzy which had begotten the vision of the Pool, would be a cruel act. But all the same he found it more and moredifficult to restrain himself, to keep back the questions whichburnt on his tongue. 

As for 'Lias, his half-shut eye would brighten whenever Davidshowed himself at the door, and he would point to a wooden stool onthe other side of the fire. 

'Sit tha down, lad. Margret, gie him soom tay, ' or 'Margret, yo'lljust find him a bit oatcake. '

And then the two would fall upon their books together, and theconversation would glide imperceptibly into one of those scenes ofhalf-dramatic impersonation, for which David's relish was stillunimpaired. 

But the old man was growing much weaker; his inventions had lessfelicity, less range than of old; and the watchful Margaret, at herloom in the corner, kept an eye on any signs of an undueexcitement, and turned out David or any other visitor, neck andcrop, without scruple, as soon as it seemed to her that hercrippled seer was doing himself a mischief. Poor soul! she hadlived in this tumult of 'Lias's fancies year after year, till thesolid world often turned about her. And she, all the while, sosimple, so sane--the ordinary good woman, with the ordinary woman'shunger for the common blessings of life--a little love, a littlechat, a little prosaic well-being! She had had two sons--they weregone. She had been the proud wife 'o' t' cliverest mon atwixtSheffield an Manchester, ' as Frimley and the adjacent villages hadonce expressed it, when every mother that respected herself senther children to 'Lias Dawson's school. And the mysterious chancesof a summer night had sent home upon her hands a poor incapable, ruined in mind and body, who was to live henceforward upon hercharity, wandering amid the chaotic wreck and debris of his formerself. 

Well, she took up her burden!

The straggling village on Frimley Moor was mainly inhabited by acolony of silk hand-loom weavers--the descendants of Frenchprisoners in the great war, and employed for the most part by afirm at Leck. Very dainty work was done at Frimley, and verybeautiful stuffs made. The craft went from father to son. AllMargaret's belongings had been weavers; but 'Lias, in the pride ofhis schoolmaster's position, would never allow his wife to use thetrade of her youth. When he became dependent on her, Margaretbought a disused loom from a cousin, had it mended and repaired, and set to work. Her fingers had not forgotten their old cunning;and when she was paid for her first 'cut, ' she hurried home to'Lias with a reviving joy in her crushed heart. Thenceforward, shelived at her loom; she became a skilled and favoured worker, andthe work grew dear to her--first, because 'Lias lived on it, and, next, because the bright roses and ribbon-patterns she wove intoher costly stuffs were a perpetual cheer to her. The moors mightfrown outside, the snow might drift against the cottage walls:Margaret had always something gay under her fingers, and threw hershuttle with the more zest the darker and colder grew theDerbyshire world without. 

Naturally the result of this long concentration of effort had beento make the poor soul, for whom each day was lived and fought, theapple of Margaret's eye. So long as that bent, white form satbeside her fire, Margaret was happy. Her heart sank with everyfresh sign of age and weakness, revived with every brighter hour. He still lorded it over her often, as he had done in the days oftheir prosperity, and whenever this old mood came back upon him, Margaret could have cried for pleasure. 

The natural correlative of such devotion was a drying up ofinterest in all the world beside. Margaret had the selfishness ofthe angelic woman--everything was judged as it affected her idol. So at first she took no individual interest in David--he cheered up'Lias--she had no other thought about him. 

On a certain November day David was sitting opposite to 'Lias. Thefire burnt between them, and on the fire was a griddle, whereonMargaret had just deposited some oatcakes for tea. The old man wassitting drooped in his chair, his chin on his breast, his blackeyes staring beyond David at the wall. David was seized withcuriosity--what was he thinking about?--what did he see? There wasa mystery, a weirdness about the figure, about that hungry gaze, which tormented him. His temptation returned upon him irresistibly. 

'Lias, ' he said, bending forward, his dark cheek flushing withexcitement, 'Louie and I went up, Easter Eve, to t' Pool, but wewent to sleep an saw nowt. What was't yo saw, 'Lias? Did yo see herfor sure?'

The old man raised his head frowning, and looked at the boy. Butthe frown was merely nervous, he had heard nothing. On the otherhand, Margaret, whom David had supposed to be in the back kitchen, but who was in reality a few steps behind him, mending somethingwhich had gone wrong in her loom, ran forward suddenly to the fire, and bending over her griddle somehow promptly threw down the tongs, making a clatter and commotion, in the midst of which the cakescaught, and old 'Lias moved from the fender, saying fretfully, 'Yo're that orkard wi things, Margret, yo're like a dog dancin. '

But in the bustle Margaret had managed to say to David, 'Howd yourtongue, noddle-yed, will yo?'

And so unexpected was the lightning from her usually mild blue eyesthat David sat dumbfounded, and presently sulkily got up to go. Margaret followed him out and down the bit of garden. 

And at the gate, when they were well out of hearing of 'Lias, shefell on the boy with a torrent of words, gripping him the whilewith her long thin hand, so that only violence could have releasedhim. Her eyes flamed at him under the brown woollen shawl she worepinned under her chin; the little emaciated creature became a fury. What did he come there for, 'moiderin 'Lias wi his divilments'? Ifhe ever said a word of such things again, she'd lock the door onhim, and he might go to Jenny Crum for his tea. Not a bite or a supshould he ever have in her house again. 

'I meant no harm, ' said the boy doggedly. 'It wor he towd me aboutt' witch--it wor he as put it into our yeds--Louie an me. '

Margaret exclaimed. So it was he that got 'Lias talking about thePool in the spring! Some one had been 'cankin wi him about thingsthey didn't owt'--that she knew--'and she might ha thowt it wor'Davy. For that one day's 'worritin ov him' she had had him on herhands for weeks--off his sleep, and off his feed, and like ablighted thing. 'Aye, it's aw play to yo, ' she said, trembling allthrough in her passion, as she held the boy--'it's aw play to yoand your minx of a sister. An if it means deein to the old manhissel, _yo_ don't care! "Margaret, " says the doctor to melast week, "if you can keep his mind quiet he may hang on a bit. But you munna let him excite hissel about owt--he mun tak thingsvarra easy. He's like a wilted leaf--nobbut t'least thing willbring it down. He's worn varra thin like, heart an lungs, and aw t'rest of him. " An d' yo think I'st sit still an see yo _murder_him--the poor lamb--afore my eyes--me as ha got nowt else but himi' t' wide warld? No--yo yoong varlet--goo an ast soom one elseabout Jenny Crum if yo 're just set on meddlin wi divil's wark--butyo'll no trouble my 'Lias. '

She took her hands off him, and the boy was going away in ahalf-sullen silence, when she caught him again. 

'Who towd yo about 'Lias an t' Pool, nobbut 'Lias hissel?'

'Uncle Reuben towd me summat. '

'Aye, Reuben Grieve--he put him in t' carrier's cart, an behavedmoor like a Christian nor his wife--I allus mind that o' ReubenGrieve, when foak coe him a foo. Wal, I'st tell yo, Davy, an ifiver yo want to say a word about Jenny Crum in our houseafterwards, yo mun ha a gritstone whar your heart owt to be--that'saw. '

And she leant over the wall of the little garden, twisting herapron in her old, tremulous hands, and choking down the tears whichhad begun to rise. Then, looking straight before her, and in a low, plaintive voice, which seemed to float on hidden depths of grief, she told her story. 

It appeared that 'Lias had been 'queer' a good while before theadventure of the Pool. But, according to his wife, 'he wor thatcliver on his good days, foak could mak shift wi him on his baddays;' the school still prospered, and money was still plentiful. Then, all of a sudden, the moorland villages round were overtakenby an epidemic of spirit-rapping and table-turning. 'It wor sperritshere, sperrits there, sperrits everywhere--t' warld wor gradelyswarmin wi 'em, ' said Margaret bitterly. It was all started, apparently, by a worthless 'felly' from Castleton, who had a greatreputation as a medium, and would come over on summer evenings toconduct seances at Frimley and the places near. 'Lias, already in anexcitable, overworked state, was bitten by the new mania, and couldthink of nothing else. 

One night he and the Castleton medium fell talking about JennyCrum, the witch of Kinder Scout, and her Easter Eve performances. The medium bet 'Lias a handsome sum that he would not dare faceher. 'Lias, piqued and wrathful, and 'wi moor yell on board nor hecould reetly stan, ' took the bet. Margaret heard nothing of it. Heannounced on Easter Eve that he was going to a brother in Edale forthe Sunday, and gave her the slip. She saw no more of him till thecarrier brought home to her, on the Sunday morning, a starved andpallid object--'gone clean silly, an hutched thegither like an owdman o' seventy--he bein fifty-six by his reet years. ' With woe andterror she helped him to his bed, and in that bed he stayed formore than a year, while everything went from them--school andsavings, and all the joys of life. 

'An yo'll be wantin to know, like t' rest o' 'em, what he saw!'cried Margaret angrily, facing round upon the boy, whose face was, indeed, one question. ' "Margaret, did he tell tha what t' witchsaid to un?"--every blatherin idiot i' th' parish asked me that, wihis mouth open, till I cud ha stopped my ears an run wheniver Iseed a livin creetur. What do I keer?--what doos it matter to mewhat he saw? I doan't bleeve he saw owt, if yo ast _me_. Hewor skeert wi his own thinkins, an th' cowd gripped him i' th'in'ards, an twisted him as yo may twist a withe of hay--Aye! it wora _cruel_ neet. When I opened t' door i' t' early mornin, t'garden wor aw black--th' ice on t' reservoir wor inches thick. Monya year afterwards t' foak round here ud talk o' that for an Aprilfrost. An my poor 'Lias--lost on that fearfu Scout--sleepin outwi'out a rag to cover him, an skeert soomhow--t'Lord or t'Devilknows how! And then foak ud have me mak a good tale out o'it--soomthin to gie 'em a ticklin down their backbane--soomthin topass an evenin--_Lord!'_

The wife's voice paused abruptly on this word of imprecation, orappeal, as though her own passion choked her. David stood besideher awkwardly, his eyes fixed on the gravel, wherewith one foot wasplaying. There was no more sullenness in his expression. 

Margaret's hand still played restlessly with the handkerchief. Hereyes were far away, her mind absorbed by the story of her own fate. Round the moorside, on which the cottage was built, there bent acircling edge of wood, now aflame with all the colour of lateautumn. Against its deep reds and browns, Margaret's small profilewas thrown out--the profile already of the old woman, with themeeting nose and chin, the hollow cheek, the maze of wrinkles roundthe eyes. Into that face, worn by the labour and the grief of thepoor--into that bending figure, with the peasant shawl folded roundthe head and shoulders--there had passed all the tragic dignitywhich belongs to the simple and heartfelt things of human life, tothe pain of helpless affection, to the yearning of irremediableloss. 

The boy beside her was too young to feel this. But he felt more, perhaps, than any other lad of the moorside could have felt. Therewas, at all times, a natural responsiveness in him of a strangekind, vibrating rather to pain than joy. He stood by her, embarrassed, yet drawn to her--waiting, too, as it seemed to him, for something more that must be coming. 

'An then, ' said Margaret at last, turning to him, and speaking morequietly, but still in a kind of tense way, 'then, when 'Lias wortook bad, yo know, Davy, I had my boys. Did yo ever hear tell o'what came to 'em, Davy?'

The boy shook his head. 

'Ah!' she said, catching her breath painfully, 'they're moastforgotten, is my boys. 'Lias had been seven weeks i' his bed, an Iwor noan so mich cast down--i' those days I had a sperrit more 'nmost. I thowt th' boys ud keer for us--we'd gien em a good bringinup, an they wor boath on 'em larnin trades i' Manchester. Yanevenin--it wor that hot we had aw t' doors an windows open--theercame a man runnin up fro t' railway. An my boys were kilt, Davy--boath on 'em--i' Duley Moor Tunnel. They wor coomin to spendSunday wi us, an it wor an excursion train--I niver knew t' reetson 't!'

She paused and gently wiped away her tears. Her passion had allebbed. 

'An I thowt if I cud ha got 'em home an buried 'em, Davy, I couldha borne it better. But they wor aw crushed, an cut about, anriddlet to bits--they wudna let me ha em. And so we kep it fro'Lias. Soomtimes I think he knows t' boys are dead--an thensoomtimes he frets 'at they doan't coom an see him. Fourteen yearago! An I goo on tellin him they'll coom soon. An last week, when Itowd him it, I thowt to mysel it wor just th' naked truth!'

David leant over the gate, pulling at some withered hollyhocksbeside it. But when, after a minute of choking silence, Margaretcaught his look, she saw, though he tried to hide it, that hisblack eyes were swimming. Her full heart melted altogether. 

'Oh, Davy, I meant naw offence!' she said, catching him by the armagain. 'Yo're a good lad, an yo're allus a welcome seet to that poorcreetur. But yo'll not say owt to trouble him again, laddie--willyo? If he'd yeerd yo just now--but, by t' Lord's blessin, he didna--he'd ha worked himsel up fearfu'! I'd ha had naw sleep wi himfor neets--like it wor i' th' spring. Yo munna--yo munna! He's allI ha--his livin 's my livin, Davy--an when he's took away--why, I'll mak shift soomhow to dee too!'

She let him go, and, with a long sigh, she lifted her tremblinghands to her head, put her frilled cap straight and her shawl. Shewas just moving away, when something of a different sort struck hersensitive soul, and she turned again. She lived for 'Lias, but shelived for her religion too, and it seemed to her she had beensinning in her piteous talk. 

'Dinna think, Davy, ' she said hurriedly, 'as I'm complainin o' th'Lord's judgments. They're aw mercies, if we did but know. An Hetempers th' wind--He sends us help when we're droppin for sorrow. It worn't for nothin He made us all o' a piece. Theer's good foaki' th' warld--aye, theer is! An what's moor, theer's soom o' th'best mak o' foak gooin about dressed i' th' worst mak o' clothes. Yo'll find it out when yo want 'em. '

And with a clearing face, as of one who takes up a burden again andadjusts it anew more easily, she walked back to the house. 

David went down the lane homewards, whistling hard. But once, as heclimbed a stile and sat dangling his legs a moment on the top, hefelt his eyes wet again. He dashed his hand impatiently acrossthem. At this stage of youth he was constantly falling out with andresenting his own faculty of pity, of emotion. The attitude of mindhad in it a sort of secret half-conscious terror of what feelingmight do with him did he but give it head. He did not want tofeel--feeling only hurt and stabbed--he wanted to enjoy, to takein, to discover--to fling the wild energies of mind and body intosome action worthy of them. And because he had no knowledge to showhim how, and a wavering will, he suffered and deteriorated. 

The Dawsons, indeed, became his close friends. In Margaret therehad sprung up a motherly affection for the handsome lonely lad; andhe was grateful. He took her 'cuts' down to the Clough End officefor her; when the snow was deep on the Scout, and Reuben and Davidand the dogs were out after their sheep night and day, the boystill found time to shovel the snow from Margaret's roof and cut apassage for her to the road. The hours he spent this winter by herkitchen fire, chatting with 'Lias, or eating havercakes, or helpingMargaret with some household work, supplied him for the first timewith something of what his youth was, in truth, thirsting for--thecommon kindliness of natural affection. 

But certainly, to most observers, he seemed to deteriorate. Mr. Ancrum could make nothing of him. David held the minister atarm's-length, and meanwhile rumours reached him that 'ReubenGrieve's nevvy' was beginning to be much seen in the public-houses;he had ceased entirely to go to chapel or Sunday school; and thelocal gossips, starting perhaps from a natural prejudice againstthe sons of unknown and probably disreputable mothers, prophesiedfreely that the tall, queer-looking lad would go to the bad. 

All this troubled Mr. Ancrum sincerely. Even in the midst of somerising troubles of his own he found the energy to buttonhole Reubenagain, and torment him afresh on the subject of a trade for thelad. 

Reuben, flushed and tremulous, went straight from the minister tohis wife--with the impetus of Mr. Ancrum's shove, as it were, freshupon him. Sitting opposite to her in the back kitchen, while shepeeled her potatoes with a fierce competence and energy which madehis heart sick within him, Reuben told her, with incoherentrepetitions of every phrase, that in his opinion the time had comewhen Mr. Gurney should be written to, and some of Sandy's savingsapplied to the starting of Sandy's son in the world. 

There was an ominous silence. Hannah's knife flashed, and thepotato-peelings fell with a rapidity which fairly paralysed Reuben. In his nervousness, he let fall the name of Mr. Ancrum. Then Hannahbroke out. '_Some_ foo', ' she knew, had been meddling, and shemight have guessed that fool was Mr. Ancrum. Instead of defendingher own position, she fell upon Reuben and his supporter with arhetoric whereof the moral flavour was positively astounding. Standing with the potato-bowl on one hip and a hand holding theknife on the other, she delivered her views as to David's laziness, temper, and general good-for-nothingness. If Reuben chose to incurthe risks of throwing such a young lout into town-wickedness, withno one to look after him, let him; she'd be glad enough to be shuton him. But, as to writing to Mr. Gurney and that sort of talk, shewasn't going to bandy words--not she; but nobody had ever meddledwith Hannah Grieve's affairs yet and found they had done well forthemselves. 

'An I wouldna advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to begin now--no, Iwouldna. I gie yo fair noatice. Soa theer's not enough for t' ladto do, Mr. Ancrum, he thinks? Perhaps he'll tak th' place an try?I'd not gie him as mich wage as ud fill his stomach i' th'week--noa, I'd not, not if yo wor to ask _me_--a bletherinwindy chap as iver I saw. I'd as soon hear a bird-clapper preach ashim--theer'd be more sense an less noise! An they're findin it outdown theer--we'st see th' back on him soon. '

And to Reuben, looking across the little scullery at his wife, atthe harsh face shaken with the rage which these new and intolerableattempts of her husband to dislodge the yoke of years excited inher, it was as though like Christian and Hopeful he were trying toget back into the Way, and found that the floods had risen over it. 

When he was out of her sight, he fell into a boundless perplexity. Perhaps she was right, after all. Mr. Ancrum was a meddler and hean ass. When next he saw David, he spoke to the boy harshly, anddemanded to know where he went loafing every afternoon. Then, asthe days went on, he discovered that Hannah meant to visit hisinsubordination upon him in various unpleasant ways. There werecertain little creature comforts, making but small show on thesurface of a life of general abstinence and frugality, but which, in the course of years, had grown very important to Reuben, andwhich Hannah had never denied him. They were now withdrawn. In herpresent state of temper with her better half, Hannah could not be'fashed' with providing them. And no one could force her to brew himhis toddy at night, or put his slippers to warm, or keep his mealshot and tasty for him, if some emergency among the animals made himlate for his usual hours--certainly not the weak and stammeringReuben. He was at her mercy, and he chafed indescribably under herunaccustomed neglect. 

As for Mr. Ancrum, his own affairs, poor soul, soon became soabsorbing that he had no thoughts left for David. There weredissensions growing between him and the 'Christian Brethren. ' Hespoke often at the Sunday meetings--too often, by a great deal, forthe other shining lights of the congregation. But his much speakingseemed to come rather of restlessness than of a fall 'experience, 'so torn, subtle, and difficult were the things he said. Gravedoubts of his doctrine were rising among some of the 'Brethren'; amean intrigue against him was just starting among others, and hehimself was tempest-tossed, not knowing from week to week whetherto go or stay. 

Meanwhile, as the winter went on, he soon perceived that ReubenGrieve's formidable wife was added to the ranks of his enemies. Shecame to chapel, because for a Christian Brother or Sister to goanywhere else would have been a confession of weakness in the faceof other critical and observant communities--such, for instance, asthe Calvinistic Methodists, or the Particular Baptists--not to bethought of for a moment. But when he passed her, he got no greetingfrom her; she drew her skirts aside, and her stony eye lookedbeyond him, as though there were nothing on the road. And thesharp-tongued things she said of him came round to him one by one. Reuben, too, avoided the minister, who, a year or two before, hadbrought fountains of refreshing to his soul, and in the business ofthe chapel, of which he was still an elder, showed himself moreinarticulate and confused than ever. While David, who had won acorner in Mr. Ancrum's heart since the days of their firstacquaintance at Sunday-school--David fled him altogether, and wouldhave none of his counsel or his friendship. The alienation of theGrieves made another and a bitter drop in the minister's rising cupof failure. 

So the little web of motives and cross-motives, for the most partof the commonest earthiest hue, yet shot every here and there by athread or two of heavenlier stuff, went spinning itself the winterthrough round the unknowing children. The reports which had reachedMr. Ancrum were true enough. David was, in his measure, endeavouring to 'see life. ' On a good many winter evenings the lad, now nearly fifteen, and shooting up fast to man's stature, mighthave been seen among the topers at the 'Crooked Cow, ' nay, evenlending an excited ear to the Secularist speakers, who did theirbest to keep things lively at a certain low public kept by oneJerry Timmins, a Radical wag, who had often measured himself bothin the meeting-houses and in the streets against the localpreachers, and, according to his own following, with no smallsuccess. There was a covered skittle-ground attached to this housein which, to the horrid scandal of church and chapel, Sunday danceswere sometimes held. A certain fastidious pride, and no doubt acertain conscience towards Reuben, kept David from experimenting inthese performances, which were made as demonstratively offensive tothe pious as they well could be without attracting the attention ofthe police. 

But at the disputations between Timmins and a succession ofreligious enthusiasts, ministers and others, which took place onthe same spot during the winter and spring, David was frequentlypresent. 

Neither here, however, nor at the 'Crooked Cow' did the companyfeel the moody growing youth to be one of themselves. He would sitwith his pint before him, silent, his great black eyes roving roundthe persons present. His tongue was sharp on occasion, and hisfists ready, so that after various attempts to make a butt of himhe was generally let alone. He got what he wanted--he learnt toknow what smoking and drinking might be like, and the jokes of thetaproom. And all by the help of a few shillings dealt out to himthis winter for the first time by Reuben, who gave them to him witha queer deprecating look and an injunction to keep the mattersecret from Hannah. As to the use the lad made of them, Reuben wasas ignorant as he was of all other practical affairs outside hisown few acres. 

CHAPTER VII

Spring came round again and the warm days of June. At Easter timeDavid had made no further attempts to meet with Jenny Crum on hermidnight wanderings. The whole tendency of his winter's mentalgrowth, as well perhaps of the matters brutally raised and crudelysifted in Jerry Timmins's parlour, had been towards a harder andmore sceptical habit of mind. For the moment the supernatural hadno thrill in it for an intelligence full of contradictions. So thepoor witch, if indeed she 'walked, ' revisited her place of painunobserved of mortal eye. 

About the middle of June David and his uncle went, as usual, toKettlewell and Masholme, in Yorkshire, for the purpose of bringinghome from thence some of that hardier breed of sheep which wasrequired for the moorland, a Scotch breed brought down yearly tothe Yorkshire markets by the Lowland farmers beyond the border. This expedition was an annual matter, and most of the farmers inthe Kinder Valley and thereabouts joined in it. They went togetherby train to Masholme, made their purchases, and then drove theirsheep over the moors home, filling the wide ferny stretches and therough upland road with a patriarchal wealth of flocks, and puttingup at night at the village inns, while their charges strayed atwill over the hills. These yearly journeys had always been informer years a joy to David. The wild freedom of the walk, thechange of scene which every mile and every village brought with it, the resistance of the moorland wind, the spring of the moorlandturf, every little incident of the road, whether of hardship or ofrough excess, added fuel to the flame of youth, and went to buildup the growing creature. 

This year, however, that troubling of the waters which was going onin the boy was especially active during the Masholme expedition. Hekept to himself and his animals, and showed such a gruffunneighbourly aspect to the rest of the world that the otherdrivers first teased and then persecuted him. He fought one or twopitched battles on the way home, showed himself a more respectableantagonist, on the whole, than his assailants had bargained for, and was thenceforward contemptuously sent to Coventry. 'Yoong man, 'said an old farmer to him once reprovingly, after one of these"rumpuses, " '_yor_ temper woan't mouldy wi keepin. ' Reubencoming by at the moment threw an unhappy glance at the lad, whosebruised face and torn clothes showed he had been fighting. To theuncle's mind there was a wanton, nay, a ruffianly look about him, which was wholly new. Instead of rebuking the culprit, Reubenslouched away and put as much road as possible between himself andDavy. 

One evening, after a long day on the moors, the party came, late inthe afternoon, to the Yorkshire village of Haworth. To David it wasa village like any other. He was already mortally tired of thewhole business--of the endless hills, the company, the bleak greyweather. While the rest of the party were mopping brows anddraining ale-pots in the farmers' public, he was employing himselfin aimlessly kicking a stone about one of the streets, when he wasaccosted by a woman of the shopkeeping class, a decent elderlywoman, who had come out for a mouthful of air, with a childdragging after her. 

'Yoong mester, yo've coom fro a distance, hannot yo?'

The woman's tone struck the boy pleasantly as though it had been aphrase of cheerful music. There was a motherliness in it--asomething, for which, perhaps all unknown to himself, his secretheart was thirsting. 

'Fro Masholme, ' he said, looking at her full, so that she could seeall the dark, richly coloured face she had had a curiosity to see;then he added abruptly, 'We're bound Kinder way wi t' sheep--reett'other side o' t' Scout. '

The woman nodded. 'Aye, I know a good mony o' your Kinder foak. They've coom by here a mony year passt. But I doan't know as I'veseen yo afoor. Yo're nobbut a yoong 'un. Eh, but we get sich asight of strangers here now, the yan fairly drives the tother outof a body's mind. '

'Doos foak coom for t' summer?' asked David, lifting his eyebrows alittle, and looking round on the bleak and straggling village. 

'Noa, they coom to see the church. Lor' bless ye!' said the goodwoman, following his eyes towards the edifice and breaking into alaugh, ''taint becos the church is onything much to look at. 'Taintnowt out o' t' common that I knows on. Noa--but they coom alongo't' monument, an' Miss Bronte--Mrs. Nicholls, as should be, poorthing--rayder. '

There was no light of understanding in David's face, but hispenetrating eyes, the size and beauty of which she could not helpobserving, seemed to invite her to go on. 

'You niver heerd on our Miss Bronte?' said the woman, mildly. 'Well, I spose not. She was just a bit quiet body. Nobbodyhereabouts saw mich in her. But she wrote bukes--tales, yoknow--tales about t' foak roun here; an they do say, them as hasread 'em, 'at they're terr'ble good. Mr. Watson, at t' Post Office, he's read 'em, and he's allus promised to lend 'em me. But soomhowI doan't get th' time. An in gineral I've naw moor use for a booknor a coo has for clogs. But she's terr'ble famous, is Miss Bronte, now--an her sisters too, pore young women. Yo should see t'visitors' book in th' church. Aw t' grand foak as iver wor. Theycooms fro Lunnon a purpose, soom ov 'em, an they just takes a lookroun t' place, an writes their names, an goos away. Would yo liketo see th' church?' said the good-natured creature--looking at thetall lad beside her with an admiring scrutiny such as every womanknows she may apply to any male. 'I'm goin that way, an it's mybrother 'at has th' keys. '

David accompanied her with an alacrity which would have astonishedhis usual travelling companions, and they mounted the stragglingvillage street together towards the church. As they neared it thewoman stopped and, shading her eyes against the sunlight, pointedup to it and the parsonage. 

'Noa, it's not a beauty, isn't our church. They do say our parsonud like to have it pulled clean down an a new one built. Onyways, they're goin to clear th' Brontes' pew away, an sich a rumpus assoom o' t' Bradford papers have bin makin, and a gradely few o' t'people here too! I doan't know t' reets on 't missel, but I'st besorry when yo conno see ony moor where Miss Charlotte an Miss Emilyused to sit o' Sundays--An theer's th' owd house. Yo used to be'lowed to see Miss Charlotte's room, where she did her writin, butthey tell me yo can't be let in now. Seems strange, doan't it, 'atonybody should be real fond o' that place? When yo go by it i'winter, soomtimes, it lukes that lonesome, with t' churchyardcoomin up close roun it, it's enoof to gie a body th' shivers. ButI do bleeve, Miss Charlotte she could ha kissed ivery stone in 't;an they do say, when she came back fro furrin parts, she'd sit ancry for joy, she wor that partial to Haworth. It's a place yo doget to favour soomhow, ' said the good woman, apologetically, asthough feeling that no stranger could justly be expected tosympathise with the excesses of local patriotism. 

Did th' oother sisters write books?' demanded David, his eyeswandering over the bare stone house towards which the passionateheart of Charlotte Bronte had yearned so often from the land ofexile. 

'Bless yo, yes. An theer's mony foak 'at think Miss Emily wor adeol cliverer even nor Miss Charlotte. Not but what yo get a badnoshun o' Yorkshire folk fro Miss Emily's bukes--soa I'm towd. Bitthere's rough doins on t' moors soomtimes, I'll uphowd yo! An MissEmily had eyes like gimlets--they seed reet through a body. Dearyme, ' she cried, the fountain of gossip opening more and more, 'tothink I should ha known 'em in pinafores, Mr. Patrick an aw!'

And under the stress of what was really a wonder at the smallbeginnings of fame--a wonder which much repetition of her story hadonly developed in her--she poured out upon her companion thehistory of the Brontes; of that awful winter in which three of thatweird band--Emily, Patrick, Anne--fell away from Charlotte's side, met the death which belonged to each, and left Charlotte alone toreap the harvest of their common life through a few burning years;of the publication of the books; how the men of the Mechanics'Institute (the roof of which she pointed out to him) went crazyover 'Shirley'; how everybody about 'thowt Miss Bronte had binputtin ov 'em into prent, ' and didn't know whether to be pleased orpique; how, as the noise made by 'Jane Eyre' and 'Shirley' grew, awave of excitement passed through the whole countryside, and peoplecame from Halifax, and Bradford, and Huddersfield--aye, an Lunnonsoomtoimes '--to Haworth church on a Sunday, to see the quiet bodyat her prayers who had made all the stir; how Mr. Nicholls, thecurate, bided his time and pressed his wooing; how he won her asRachel was won; and how love did but open the gate of death, andthe fiery little creature--exhausted by such an energy of living ashad possessed her from her cradle--sank and died on the thresholdof her new life. All this Charlotte Bronte's townswoman told simplyand garrulously, but she told it well because she had felt andseen. 

'She wor so sma' and nesh; nowt but a midge. Theer was no lasst inher. Aye, when I heerd the bell tolling for Miss Charlotte thatSaturday mornin, ' said the speaker, shaking her head as she movedaway towards the church, 'I cud ha sat down an cried my eyes out. But if she'd ha seen me she'd ha nobbut said, "Martha, get yourhouse straight, an doan't fret for me!" She had sich a sperrit, hadMiss Charlotte. Well, now, after aw, I needn't go for t' keys, forth' church door's open. It's Bradford early closin day, yo see, anI dessay soom Bradford foak's goin over. '

So she marched him in, and there indeed was a crowd in the littleugly church, congregated especially at the east end, where theBrontes' pew still stood awaiting demolition at the hands of areforming vicar. As David and his guide came up they found a youngweaver in a black coat, with a sallow oblong face, black hair, highcollars, and a general look of Lord Byron, haranguing those abouthim on the iniquity of removing the pews, in a passionateundertone, which occasionally rose high above the key prescribed bydecorum. It was a half-baked eloquence, sadly liable to bathos, divided, indeed, between sentences ringing with the great words'genius' and 'fame, ' and others devoted to an indignantcontemplation of the hassocks in the old pews, 'the touching andwell-worn implements of prayer, ' to quote his handsome descriptionof them, which a meddlesome parson was about to 'hurl away, ' out ofmere hatred for intellect and contempt of the popular voice. 

But, half-baked or no, David rose to it greedily. After a fewmoments' listening, he pressed up closer to the speaker, his broadshoulders already making themselves felt in a crowd, his eyesbeginning to glow with the dissenter's hatred of parsons. In thefull tide of discourse, however, the orator was arrested by anindignant sexton, who, coming quickly up the church, laid hold uponhim. 

'No speechmakin in the church, if you _please_, sir. Move onif yo're goin to th' vestry, sir, for I'll have to shut updirectly. '

The young man stared haughtily at his assailant, and the men andboys near closed up, expecting a row. But the voice of authoritywithin its own gates is strong, and the champion of outraged geniuscollapsed. The whole flock broke up and meekly followed the sexton, who strode on before them to the vestry. 

'William's a rare way wi un, ' said his companion to David, following her brother's triumph with looks of admiration. 'I thowtthat un wud ha bin harder to shift. '

David, however, turned upon her with a frown. '_'Tis_ a blackshame, ' he said; 'why conno they let t' owd pew bide?'

'Ah, weel, ' said the woman with a sigh, 'as I said afore, I'st bereet sorry when Miss Charlotte's seat's gone. But yo conno habrawlin i' church. William's reet enough there. '

And beginning to be alarmed lest she should be raising up freshtrouble for William in the person of this strange, foreign-lookinglad, with his eyes like 'live birds, ' she hurried him on to thevestry, where the visitors' books were being displayed. Here theByronic young man was attempting to pick a fresh quarrel with thesexton, by way of recovering himself with his party. But he tooklittle by it; the sexton was a tough customer. When the localpress was shaken in his face, the vicar's hireling, a canny, weather-beaten Yorkshireman, merely replied with a twist of themouth, 'Aye, aye, th' newspapers talk--there'd be soombody goin hoongry ifthey didn't;' or--' Them 'at has to eat th' egg knaws best whetherit is addled or no--to my thinkin, ' and so on through a string ofsimilar aphorisms which finally demolished his antagonist. 

David meanwhile was burning to be in the fray. He thought of somefine Miltonic sayings to hurl at the sexton, but for the life ofhim he could not get them out. In the presence of that indifferent, sharp-faced crowd of townspeople his throat grew hot and drywhenever he thought of speaking. 

While the Bradford party struggled out of the church, David, havingsomehow got parted from the woman who had brought him in, lingeredbehind, before that plain tablet on the wall, whereat the crowdwhich had just gone out had been worshipping. 

EMILY, aged 29. 

ANNE, aged 27. 

CHARLOTTE, in the 39th year of her age. 

The church had grown suddenly quite still. The sexton was outside, engaged in turning back a group of Americans, on the plea thatvisiting hours were over for the day. Through the wide-open doorthe fading yellow light streamed in, and with it a cool wind whichchased little eddies of dust about the pavement. In the dusk thethree names--black on the white--stood out with a stern and yetpiteous distinctness. The boy stood there feeling the silence--thetomb near by--the wonder and pathos of fame, and all that thrill ofundefined emotion to which youth yields itself so hungrily. 

The sexton startled him by tapping him on the shoulder. 'Time to gohome, yoong man. My sister she told me to say good neet to yer, andshe wishes yo good luck wi your journey. Where are yo puttin up?'

'At the "Brown Bess, "' murmured the boy ungraciously, and hurriedout. But the good man, unconscious of repulse and kindly disposedtowards his sister's waif, stuck to him, and, as they walked downthe churchyard together, the difference between the manners ofofficial and those of private life proved to be so melting to thetemper that even David's began to yield. And a little incident ofthe walk mollified him completely. As they turned a corner theycame upon a bit of waste land, and there in the centre of anadmiring company was the sexton's enemy, mounted on a bit of wall, and dealing out their deserts in fine style to those meddlingparsons and their underlings who despised genius and took no heedof the relics of the mighty dead. The sexton stopped to listen whenthey were nearly out of range, and was fairly carried away by the'go' of the orator. 

'Doan't he do it nateral!' he said with enthusiasm to David, aftera passage specially and unflatteringly devoted to himself. 'Lor'bless yo, it don't hurt me. But I do loike a bit o' good speakin, 'at I do. If fine worrds wor penny loaves, that yoong gen'leman udget a livin aisy! An as for th' owd pew, I cud go skrikin about th'streets mysel, if it ud do a ha'porth o' good. '

David's brow cleared, and, by the time they had gone a hundredyards further, instead of fighting the good man, he asked a favourof him. 

'D'yo think as theer's onybody in Haworth as would lend me a seeto' yan o' Miss Bronte's tales for an hour?' he said, reddeningfuriously, as they stopped at the sexton's gate. 

'Why to be sure, mon, ' said the sexton cheerily, pleased with thelittle opening for intelligent patronage. 'Coom your ways in, andwe'll see if we can't oblige yo. I've got a tidy lot o' books in myparlour, an I can give yo "Shirley, " I know. '

David went into the stone-built cottage with his guide, and wasshown in the little musty front room a bookcase full of books whichmade his eyes gleam with desire. The half-curbed joy and eagernesshe showed so touched the sexton that, after inquiring as to thelad's belongings, and remembering that in his time he had enjoyedmany a pipe and 'glass o' yell' with 'owd Reuben Grieve' at the'Brown Bess, ' the worthy man actually lent him indefinitely threeprecious volumes--'Shirley, ' 'Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, 'and 'Nicholas Nickleby. '

David ran off hugging them, and thenceforward he bore patientlyenough with the days of driving and tramping which remained, forthe sake of the long evenings when in some lonely corner of moorand wood he lay full length on the grass revelling in one or otherof his new possessions. He had a voracious way of tearing out theheart of a book first of all, and then beginning it again with adifferent and a tamer curiosity, lingering, tasting, and digesting. By the time he and Reuben reached home he had rushed through allthree books, and his mind was full of them. 

'Shirley' and 'Nicholas Nickleby' were the first novels of modernlife he had ever laid hands on, and before he had finished them hefelt them in his veins like new wine. The real world had been tohim for months something sickeningly narrow and empty, from whichat times he had escaped with passion into a distant dream-life ofpoetry and history. Now the walls of this real world were suddenlypushed back as it were on all sides, and there was an inrush ofcrowd, excitement, and delight. Human beings like those he heard ofor talked with every day--factory hands and mill-owners, parsons, squires, lads and lasses--the Yorkes, and Robert Moore, Squeers, Smike, Kate Nickleby and Newman Noggs, came by, looked him in theeyes, made him take sides, compare himself with them, join in theirfights and hatreds, pity and exult with them. Here was somethingmore disturbing, personal, and stimulating than that mereimaginative relief he had been getting out of 'Paradise Lost, ' orthe scenes of the 'Jewish Wars'!

By a natural transition the mental tumult thus roused led to a moreintense self-consciousness than any he had yet known. In measuringhimself with the world of 'Shirley' or of Dickens, he began torealise the problem of his own life with a singular keenness andclearness. Then--last of all--the record of Franklin's life, --ofthe steady rise of the ill-treated printer's devil to knowledge andpower--filled him with an urging and concentrating ambition, andset his thoughts, endowed with a new heat and nimbleness, to thepractical unravelling of a practical case. 

They reached home again early on a May day. As he and Reuben, driving their new sheep, mounted the last edge of the moor whichseparated them from home, the Kinder Valley lay before them, sparkling in a double radiance of morning and of spring. Davidlingered a minute or two behind his uncle. What a glory of lightand freshness in the air--what soaring larks--what dippingswallows! And the scents from the dew-steeped heather--and themurmur of the blue and glancing stream!

The boy's heart went out to the valley--and in the same instant heput it from him. An indescribable energy and exultation tookpossession of him. The tide of will for which he had been waitingall these months had risen; and for the first time he felt swellingwithin him the power to break with habit, to cut his way. 

But what first step to take? Whom to consult? Suddenly heremembered Mr. Ancrum, first with shame, then with hope. Had hethrown away his friend? Rumour said that things were getting worseand worse at chapel, and that Mr. Ancrum was going to Manchester atonce. 

He ran down the slopes of heather towards home as though he wouldcatch and question Mr. Ancrum there and then. And Louie? Patience!He would settle everything. Meanwhile, he was regretfully persuadedthat if you had asked Miss Bronte what could be done with acreature like Louie she would have had a notion or two. 

CHAPTER VIII

'Reach me that book, Louie, ' said David peremptorily; 'it ull beworse for yo if yo don't. '

The brother and sister were in the smithy. Louie was squatting onthe ground with her hands behind her, her lips sharply shut asthough nothing should drag a word out of them, and her eyes blazingdefiance at David, who had her by the shoulder, and looked to thefull as fierce as she looked provoking. 

'Find it!' was all she said. He had been absent for a few minutesafter a sheep that had got into difficulties in the Red Brook, andwhen he returned, his volume of Rollin's 'Ancient History'--'Lias'slatest loan--which he had imprudently forgotten to take with him, had disappeared. 

David gave her an angry shake, on which she toppled over among thefallen stones with an exasperating limpness, and lay therelaughing. 

'Oh, very well, ' said David, suddenly recovering himself; 'yo keepyor secret. I'st keep mine, that's aw. '

Louie lay quiet a minute or two, laughing artificially atintervals, while David searched the corners of the smithy, turningevery now and then to give a stealthy look at his sister. 

The bait took. Louie stopped laughing, sat up, put herselfstraight, and looked about her. 

'Yo hain't got a secret, ' she said coolly; 'I'm not to be took in wisnuff that way. '

'Very well, ' said David indifferently, 'then I haven't. '

And sitting down near the pan, he took out one of the little boatsfrom the hole near, and began to trim its keel here and there withhis knife. The occupation seemed to be absorbing. 

Louie sat for a while, sucking at a lump of sugar she had sweptthat morning into the _omnium gatherum_ of her pocket. At lastshe took up a little stone and threw it across at David. 

'What's yor silly old secret about, then?'

'Where's my book, then?' replied David, holding up the boat andlooking with one eye shut along the keel. 

'Iv I gie it yer, an yor secret ain't wo'th it, I'll put soom o'that watter down yor neckhole, ' said Louie, nodding towards theplace. 

'If yo don't happen to find yorsel in th' pan fust, ' remarked Davidunmoved. 

Louie sucked at her sugar a little longer, with her hands round herknees. She had thrown off her hat, and the May sun struck full onher hair, on the glossy brilliance of it, and the natural curlsround the temples which disguised a high and narrow brow. She nolonger wore her hair loose. In passionate emulation of AnnieWigson, she had it plaited behind, and had begged an end of blueribbon of Mrs. Wigson to tie it with, so that the beautiful arch ofthe head showed more plainly than before, while the black eyes andbrows seemed to have gained in splendour and effectiveness, fromtheir simpler and severer setting. One could see, too, the lengthof the small neck and of the thin falling shoulders. It was a facenow which made many a stranger in the Clough End streets stop andlook backward after meeting it. Not so much because of its beauty, for it was still too thin and starved-looking for beauty, asbecause of a singular daring and brilliance, a sense of wild andyet conscious power it left behind it. The child had grown a greatpiece in the last year, so that her knees were hardly decentlycovered by the last year's cotton frock she wore, and her brownsticks of arms were far beyond her sleeves. David had looked at heronce or twice lately with a new kind of scrutiny. He decided thatshe was a 'rum-looking' creature, not the least like anybody else'ssister, and on the whole his raw impression was that she was plain. 

'How'll I know yo'll not cheat?' she said at last, getting up andsurveying him with her arms akimbo. 

'Can't tell, I'm sure, ' was all David vouchsafed. 'Yo mum find out. '

Louie studied him threateningly. 

'Weel, I'd be even wi yo soomhow, ' was her final conclusion; anddisappearing through the ruined doorway, she ran down the slope towhere one of the great mill-stones lay hidden in the heather, anddiving into its central hole, produced the book, keenly watched thewhile by David, who took mental note of the hiding-place. 

'Naw then, ' she said, walking up to him with her hands behind herand the book in them, 'tell me yor secret. '

David first forcibly abstracted the book and made believe to boxher ears, then went back to his seat and his boat. 

'Go on, can't yo!' exclaimed Louie, after a minute, stamping athim. 

David laid down his boat deliberately. 

'Well, yo won't like it, ' he said; 'I know that. But--I'm off toManchester, that's aw--as soon as I can goo; as soon as iver I canhear of onything. An I'm gooin if I don't hear of onything. I'mgooin onyways; I'm tired o' this. So now yo know. '

Louie stared at him. 

'Yo ain't!' she said, passionately, as though she were choking. 

David instinctively put up his hands to keep her off. He thoughtshe would have fallen upon him there and then and beaten him forhis 'secret. '

But, instead, she flung away out of the smithy, and David was leftalone and in amazement. Then he got up and went to look, stirredwith the sudden fear that she might have run off to the farm withthe news of what he had been saying, which would have precipitatedmatters unpleasantly. 

No one was to be seen from outside, either on the moor path or inthe fields beyond, and she could not possibly have got out of sightso soon. So he searched among the heather and the bilberryhummocks, till he caught sight of a bit of print cotton in a hollowjust below the quaint stone shooting-hut, built some sixty yearsago on the side of the Scout for the convenience of sportsmen. David stalked the cotton, and found her lying prone and with herhat, as usual, firmly held down over her ears. At sight of hersomething told him very plainly he had been a brute to tell her hisnews so. There was a strong moral shock which for the momenttransformed him. 

He went and lifted her up in spite of her struggles. Her face wascrimson with tears, but she hit out at him wildly to prevent hisseeing them. 'Now, Louie, look here, ' he said, holding her hands, 'Ididna mean to tell yo short and sharp like that, but yo do put abody's back up so, there's no bearin it. Don't take on, Louie. I'llcoom back when I've found soomthin, an take yo away, too, niverfear. Theer's lots o' things gells can do in Manchester--tailorin, or machinin, or dress-makin, or soomthin like that. But yo must geta bit older, an I must find a place for us to live in, so theer'snaw use fratchin, like a spiteful hen. Yo must bide and I mustbide. But I'll coom back for yo, I swear I will, an we'll get shuton Aunt Hannah, an live in a little place by ourselves, as merry aslarks. '

He looked at her appealingly. Her head was turned sullenly awayfrom him, her thin chest still heaved with sobs. But when hestopped speaking she jerked round upon him. 

'Leave me behint, an I'll murder her!'

The child's look was demoniacal. 'No, yo won't, ' said David, laughing. 'I' th' fust place, Aunt Hannah could settle a midge likeyo wi yan finger. I' th' second, hangin isn't a coomfortable way o'deein. Yo wait till I coom for yo, an when we'st ha got reet away, an can just laugh in her face if she riles us, --_that_'llspite her mich moor nor murderin. '

The black eyes gleamed uncannily for a moment and the sobbingceased. But the gleam passed away, and the child sat staring at themoorland distance, seeing nothing. There was such an unconsciousanimal pain in the attitude, the pain of the creature that feelsitself alone and deserted, that David watched her in a puzzledsilence. Louie was always mysterious, whether in her rages or hergriefs, but he had never seen her sob quite like this before. Hefelt a sort of strangeness in her fixed gaze, and with a certaintimidity he put out his arm and laid it round her shoulder. Stillshe did not move. Then he slid up closer in the heather, and kissedher. His heart, which had seemed all frostbound for months, melted, and that hunger for love--home-love, mother-love--which was, perhaps, at the very bottom of his moody complex youth, found avoice. 

'Louie, couldn't yo be nice to me soomtimes--couldn't yo just takean interest, like, yo know--as if yo cared a bit--couldn't yo?Other gells do. I'm a brute to yo, I know, often, but yo keep agginan teasin, an theer's niver a bit o' peace. Look here, Loo, yo giveup, an I'st give up. Theer's nobbut us two--nawbody else cares aha'porth about the yan or the tother--coom along! yo give up, anI'st give up. '

He looked at her anxiously. There was a new manliness in his tone, answering to his growing manliness of stature. Two slow tearsrolled down her cheeks, but she said nothing. She couldn't for thelife of her. She blinked, furiously fighting with her tears, and atlast she put up an impatient hand which left a long brown streakacross her miserable little face. 

'Yo havn't got no trade, ' she said. 'Yo'll be clemmed. ' Davidwithdrew his arm, and gulped down his rebuff. 'No, I sha'n't, ' hesaid. 'Now you just listen here. ' And he described how, the daybefore, he had been to see Mr. Ancrum, to consult him about leavingKinder, and what had come of it. 

He had been just in time. Mr. Ancrum, worn, ill, and harassed todeath, had been cheered a little during his last days at Clough Endby the appearance of David, very red and monosyllabic, on hisdoorstep. The lad's return, as he soon perceived, was due simply tothe stress of his own affairs, and not to any knowledge of orsympathy with the minister's miseries. But, none the less, therewas a certain balm in it for Mr. Ancrum, and they had sat longdiscussing matters. Yes, the minister was going--would look out atManchester for an opening for David, in the bookselling trade bypreference, and would write at once. But Davy must not leave aquarrel behind him. He must, if possible, get his uncle's consent, which Mr. Ancrum thought would be given. 

'I'm willing to lend you a hand, Davy, ' he had said, 'for you're onthe way to no trade but loafing as you are now; but square it withGrieve. You can, if you don't shirk the trouble of it. '

Whereupon Davy had made a wry face and said nothing. But to Louiehe expressed himself plainly enough. 

'I'll not say owt to oather on 'em, ' he said, pointing to thechimneys of the farm, 'till the day I bid 'em good-bye. UncleReuben, mebbe, ud be for givin me somethin to start wi, an AuntHannah ud be for cloutin tin him over the head for thinkin of it. No, I'll not be beholden to yan o' them. I've got a shillin or twofor my fare, an I'll keep mysel. '

'What wages ull yo get?' inquired Louie sharply. 

'Nothin very fat, that's sure, ' laughed David. 'If Mr. Ancrum can doas he says, an find me a place in a book-shop, they'll, mebbe, gieme six shillin to begin wi. '

'An what ull yo do wi 'at?'

'Live on't, ' replied David briefly. 

'Yo conno, I tell yo! Yo'll ha food an firin, cloos, an lodgin topay out o't. Yo conno do 't--soa theer. '

Louie looked him up and down defiantly. David was oddly struck withthe practical knowledge her remark showed. How did such a wild impknow anything about the cost of lodging and firing?

'I tell yo I'll live on't, ' he replied with energy; 'I'll get a roomfor half a crown--two shillin, p'r'aps--an I'll live on sixpence aday, see if I don't. '

'See if yo do!' retorted Louie, 'clemm on it more like. '

'That's all yo know about it, miss, ' said David, in a tone, however, of high good humour; and, stretching one of his hands downa little further into his trousers pocket, he drew out apaper-covered book, so that just the top of it appeared. 'Yo'reallus naggin about books. Well; I tell yo, I've got an idea out o'thissen ull be worth shillins a week to me. It's about BenjaminFranklin. Never yo mind who Benjamin Franklin wor; but he wor avarra cute soart of a felly; an when he wor yoong, an had nobbut afew shillins a week, he made shift to save soom o' them shillins, becos he found he could do without eatin _flesh meat_, an thatwi bread an meal an green stuff, a mon could do very well, an savesoom brass every week. When I go to Manchester, ' continued Davidemphatically, 'I shall niver touch meat. I shall buy a bag o'oatmeal like Grandfeyther Grieve lived on, boil it for mysel, wi asup o' milk, perhaps, an soom salt or treacle to gi it a taste. AnI'll buy apples an pears an oranges cheap soomwhere, an store 'em. Yo mun ha a deal o' fruit when yo doan't ha meat. Fourpence!' criedDavy, his enthusiasm rising, 'I'll live on _thruppence_ a day, as sure as yo're sittin theer! Seven thruppences is one an nine;lodgin, two shillin--three an nine. Two an three left over, forcloos, firin, an pocket money. Why, I'll be rich before yo can lookroun! An then, o' coorse, they'll not keep me long on six shillingsa week. In the book-trade I'll soon be wuth ten, an moor!'

And, springing up, he began to dance a sort of cut and shufflebefore her out of sheer spirits. Louie surveyed him with a flushedand sparkling face. The nimbleness of David's wits had never comehome to her till now. 

'What ull I earn when I coom?' she demanded abruptly. 

David stopped his cut and shuffle, and took critical stock of hissister for a moment. 

'Now, look here, Louie, yo're goin to stop where yo are, a good bityet, ' he replied decidedly. 'Yo'll have to wait two year or so--moor'n one, onyways, ' he went on hastily, warned by her start andfierce expression. 'Yo know, they can ha th' law on yo, ' and hejerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the farm. 'Boys is allreet, but gells can't do nothink till they're sixteen. They munstay wi th' foak as browt 'em up, an if they run away afore theirsixteenth birthday--they gets put in prison. '

David poured out his legal fictions hastily, three parts convincedof them at any rate, and watched eagerly for their effect on Louie. 

She tossed her head scornfully. 'Doan't b'lieve it. Yo're jesttellin lees to get shut o' me. Nex summer if yo doan't send for me, I'll run away, whativer yo may say. So yo know. '

'Yo're a tormentin thing!' exclaimed David, exasperated, and begansavagely to kick stones down the hill. Then, recovering himself, hecame and sat down beside her again. 

'I doan't want to get shut on yo, Louie. But yo won't understandnothin. '

He stopped, and began to bite at a stalk of heather, by way ofhelping himself. His mind was full of vague and yet urgent thoughtsas to what became of girls in large towns with no one to look afterthem, things he had heard said at the public-house, things he hadread. He had never dreamt of leaving Louie to Aunt Hannah's tendermercies. Of course he must take her away when he could. She was hischarge, his belonging. But all the same she was a 'limb'; in hisopinion she always would be a 'limb. ' How could he be sure of hergetting work, and who on earth was to look after her when he wasaway?

Suddenly Louie broke in on his perplexities. 

'I'll go tailorin, ' she cried triumphantly. 'Now I know--it wor t'Wigsons' cousin Em'ly went to Manchester; an she earned nineshillin a week--nine shillin I tell yo, an found her own thread. Yo'll be takin ten shillin, yo say, nex year? an I'll be takinnine. That's nineteen shillin fur th' two on us. _Isn't_ itnineteen shillin?' she said peremptorily, seizing his arm with herlong fingers. 

'Well, I dessay it is, ' said David, reluctantly. 'An precious tiredyo'll be o' settin stitchin mornin, noon, an neet. Like to see yodo't. '

'I'd do it fur nine shillin, ' she said doggedly, and sat lookingstraight before her, with wide glittering eyes. She understood fromDavid's talk that, what with meal, apples, and greenstuff, your'eatin' need cost you nothing. There would be shillings andshillings to buy things with. The child who never had a copper butwhat Uncle Reuben gave her, who passed her whole existence ingreedily coveting the unattainable and in chafing under the rule ofan iron and miserly thrift, felt suddenly intoxicated by thisgolden prospect of illimitable 'buying. ' And what could possiblyprevent its coming true? Any fool--such as 'Wigson's Em'ly'--couldearn nine shillings a week at tailoring; and to make money at yourstomach's expense seemed suddenly to put you in possession of abank on which the largest drawings were possible. It all looked soingenious, so feasible, so wholly within the grip of thatindomitable will the child felt tense within her. 

So the two sat gazing out over the moorland. It was the firstsummer day, fresh and timid yet, as though the world and the sunwere still ill-acquainted. Down below, over the sparkling brook, anold thorn was quivering in the warm breeze, its bright thin greenshining against the brown heather. The larches alone had as yet anyrichness of leaf, but the sycamore-buds glittered in the sun, andthe hedges in the lower valley made wavy green lines delightful tothe eye. A warm soft air laden with moist scents of earth and plantbathed the whole mountain-side, and played with Louie's hair. Nature wooed them with her best, and neither had a thought or alook for her. 

Suddenly Louie sprang up. 

'Theer's Aunt Hannah shoutin. I mun goo an get t' coos. '

David ran down the hill with her. 

'What'll yo do if I tell?' she inquired maliciously at the bottom. 

'If yo do I shall cut at yance, an yo'll ha all the longer time tobe by yoursen. '

A darkness fell over the girl's hard shining gaze. She turnedabruptly, then, when she had gone a few steps, turned and came backto where David stood whistling and calling for the dogs. She caughthim suddenly from behind round the neck. Naturally he thought shewas up to some mischief, and struggled away from her with an angryexclamation. But she held him tight and thrust something hard andsweet against his lips. Involuntarily his mouth opened and admittedan enticing cake of butter-scotch. She rammed it in with her wirylittle hand so that he almost choked, and then with a shrill laughshe turned and fled, leaping down the heather between the boulders, across the brook, over the wall, and out of sight. 

David was left behind, sucking. The sweetness he was conscious ofwas not all in the mouth. Never that he could remember had Louieshown him any such mark of favour. 

Next day David was sent down with the donkey-cart to Clough End tobring up some weekly stores for the family, Hannah speciallycharging him to call at the post-office and inquire for letters. Hestarted about nine o'clock, and the twelve o'clock dinner passed bywithout his reappearance. 

When she had finished her supply of meat and suet-pudding, after ameal during which no one of the three persons at table had uttereda word, Louie abruptly pushed her plate back again towards Hannah. 

'David!' was all she said. 

'Mind your manners, miss, ' said Hannah, angrily. 'Them as coomslate gets nowt. ' And, getting up, she cleared the table and put thefood away with even greater rapidity than usual. The kitchen was nosooner quite clear than the donkey-cart was heard outside, andDavid appeared, crimsoned with heat, and panting from the long tuguphill, through which he had just dragged the donkey. 

He carried a letter, which he put down on the table. Then he lookedround the kitchen. 

'Aunt's put t' dinner away, ' said Louie, shortly, ''cos yo camelate. '

David's expression changed. 'Then nex time she wants owt, she canfetch it fro Clough End hersel, ' he said violently, and went out. 

Hannah came forward and laid eager hands on the letter, which wasfrom London, addressed in a clerk's hand. 

'Louie!' she called imperatively, 'tak un out soombread-an-drippin. '

Louie put some on a plate, and went out with it to the cowhouse, where David sat on a stool, occupying himself in cutting the pagesof a number of the _Vegetarian News, _ lent him in Clough End, with trembling hands, while a fierce red spot burnt in eithercheek. 

'Tak it away!' he said, almost knocking the plate out of Louie'shands; 'it chokes me to eat a crumb o' hers. '

As Louie was bearing the plate back through the yard, Uncle Reubencame by. ' What's--what's 'at?' he said, peering shortsightedly atwhat she held. Every month of late Reuben's back had seemed to growrounder, his sight less, and his wits of less practical use. 

'Summat for David, ' said Louie, shortly, ''cos Aunt Hannah woan'tgie him no dinner. But he woan't ha it. '

Reuben's sudden look of trouble was unmistakable. 'Whar is he?'

'I' th' coo-house. '

Reuben went his way, and found the dinnerless boy deep, orapparently deep, in recipes for vegetable soups. 

'What made yo late, Davy?' he asked him, as he stood over him. 

David had more than half a mind not to answer, but at last hejerked out fiercely, 'Waitin for th' second post, fust; then t'donkey fell down half a mile out o' t' town, an th' things werespilt. There was nobody about, an' I had a job to get 'un up at a'. '

Reuben nervously thrust his hands far into his coat-pockets. 

'Coom wi me, Davy, an I'st mak yor aunt gie yer yor dinner. '

'I wouldn't eat a morsel if she went down on her bended knees tome, ' the lad broke out, and, springing up, he strode sombrelythrough the yard and into the fields. 

Reuben went slowly back into the house. Hannah was in theparlour--so he saw through the half-opened door. He went into theroom, which smelt musty and close from disuse. Hannah was standingover the open drawer of an old-fashioned corner cupboard, carefullyscanning a letter and enclosure before she locked them up. 

'Is 't Mr. Gurney's money?' Reuben said to her, in a queer voice. 

She was startled, not having heard him come in, but she put whatshe held into the drawer all the more deliberately, and turned thekey. 

'Ay, 't is. '

Reuben sat himself down on one of the hard chairs beside the tablein the middle of the room. The light streaming through the shuttersHannah had just opened streamed in on his grizzling head and faceworking with emotion. 

'It's stolen money, ' he said hoarsely. 'Yo're stealin it fro Davy. '

Hannah smiled grimly, and withdrew the key. 

'I'm paying missel an yo, Reuben Grieve, for t' keep o' twowuthless brats as cost moor nor they pays, ' she said, with anaccent which somehow sent a shiver through Reuben. '_I_ don'tkeep udder foaks' childer fur nothin. '

'Yo've had moor nor they cost for seven year, ' said Reuben, withthe same thick tense utterance. 'Yo should let Davy ha it, an giehim a trade. '

Hannah walked up to the door and shut it. 

'I should, should I? An who'll pay for Louie--for your luvely limbof a niece? It 'ud tak about that, ' and she pointed grimly to thedrawer, 'to coover what she wastes an spiles i' t' yeer. '

'Yo get her work, Hannah. Her bit and sup cost yo most nothin. Icud wark a bit moor--soa cud yo. Yo're hurtin me i' mi conscience, Hannah--yo're coomin atwixt me an th' Lord!'

He brought a shaking hand down on the damask table-cloth among thewool mats and the chapel hymn-books which adorned it. His long, loose frame had drawn itself up with a certain dignity. 

'Ha done wi your cantin!' said Hannah under her breath, laying hertwo hands on the table, and stooping down so as to face him withmore effect. The phrase startled Reuben with a kind of horror. Whatever words might have passed between them, never yet that hecould remember had his wife allowed herself a sneer at hisreligion. It seemed to him suddenly as though he and she were goingfast downhill--slipping to perdition, because of Sandy's sixhundred pounds. 

But she cowed him--she always did. She stayed a moment in the samebent and threatening position, coercing him with angry eyes. Thenshe straightened herself, and moved away. 

'Let t' lad tak hisself off if he wants to, ' she said, an ironresolution in her voice. 'I told yo so afore--I woan't cry for 'im. But as long as Louie's here, an I ha to keep her, I'll want thatmoney, an every penny on't. If it bean't paid, she may go too!'

'Yo'd not turn her out, Hannah?' cried Reuben, instinctivelyputting out an arm to feel that the door was closed. 

'_She_'d not want for a livin, ' replied Hannah, with a bittersneer; 'she's her mither's child. '

Reuben rose slowly, shaking all over. He opened the door withdifficulty, groped his way out of the front passage, then wentheavily through the yard and into the fields. There he wandered byhimself for a couple of hours, altogether forgetting some newlydropped lambs to which he had been anxiously attending. For monthspast, ever since his conscience had been roused on the subject ofhis brother's children, the dull, incapable man had been slowlyreconceiving the woman with whom he had lived some five-and-twentyyears, and of late the process had been attended with a kind ofagony. The Hannah Martin he had married had been a hard bodyindeed, but respectable, upright, with the same moral instincts ashimself. She had kept the farm together--he knew that; he could nothave lived without her, and in all practical respects she had beena good and industrious wife. He had coveted her industry and herstrong will; and, having got the use of them, he had learnt to putup with her contempt for him, and to fit his softer nature to hers. Yet it seemed to him that there had always been certain conditionsimplied in this subjection of his, and that she was breaking them. He could not have been fetching and carrying all these years for awoman who could go on wilfully appropriating money that did notbelong to her, --who could even speak with callous indifference ofthe prospect of turning out her niece to a life of sin. 

He thought of Sandy's money with loathing. It was like the cursedstuff that Achan had brought into the camp--an evil leavenfermenting in their common life, and raising monstrous growths. 

Reuben Grieve did not demand much of himself; a richer and morespiritual nature would have thought his ideals lamentably poor. But, such as they were, the past year had proved that he could notfall below them without a dumb anguish, without a sense of shuttinghimself out from grace. He felt himself--by his fear of hiswife--made a partner in Hannah's covetousness, in Hannah's crueltytowards Sandy's children. Already, it seemed to him, the face ofChrist was darkened, the fountain of grace dried up. All thoseappalling texts of judgment and reprobation he had listened to sooften in chapel, protected against them by that warm inwardcertainty of 'election, ' seemed to be now pressing against a baredand jeopardised soul. 

But if he wrote to Mr. Gurney, Hannah would never forgive him tillher dying day; and the thought of making her his enemy for good puthim in a cold sweat. 

After much pacing of the upper meadows he came heavily down at lastto see to his lambs. Davy was just jumping the wall on to hisuncle's land, having apparently come down the Frimley path. When hesaw his uncle he thrust his hands into his pockets, began towhistle, and came on with a devil-may-care swing of the figure. They met in a gateway between two fields. 

'Whar yo been, Davy?' asked Reuben, looking at him askance, andholding the gate so as to keep him. 

'To Dawson's, ' said the boy, sharply. 

Reuben's face brightened. Then the lad's empty stomach must havebeen filled; for he knew that 'Dawsons' were kind to him. Heventured to look at him more directly, and, as he did so, somethingin the attitude of the proud handsome stripling reminded him ofSandy--Sandy, in the days of his youth, coming down to show hisprosperous self at the farm. He put his large soil-stained hand onDavid's shoulder. 

'Goo yor ways in, Davy. I'll see yo ha your reets. '

David opened his eyes at him, astounded. There is nothing morestartling in human relations than the strong emotion of weakpeople. 

Reuben would have liked to say something else, but his lips openedand shut in vain. The boy, too, was hopelessly embarrassed. Atlast, Reuben let the gate fall and walked off, with downcast head, to where, in the sheep-pen, he had a few hours before bound anorphan lamb to a refractory foster-mother. The foster-mother'sresistance had broken down, she was lying patiently and gentlywhile the thin long-legged creature sucked; when it was frightenedaway by Reuben's approach she trotted bleating after it. In hisdisturbed state of feeling the parallel, or rather the contrast, between the dumb animal and the woman struck home. 

CHAPTER IX

But the crisis which had looked so near delayed!

Poor Reuben! The morning after his sudden show of spirit to Davidhe felt himself, to his own miserable surprise, no more courageousthan he had been before it. Yet the impression made had gone toodeep to end in nothingness. He contracted a habit of getting byhimself in the fields and puzzling his brain with figures--anoccupation so unfamiliar and exhausting that it wore him a gooddeal; and Hannah, when he came in at night, would wonder, with astart, whether he were beginning 'to break up. ' But it possessedhim more and more. Hannah would not give up the money, but Davidmust have his rights. How could it be done? For the first timeReuben fell to calculation over his money matters, which he did notask Hannah to revise. But meanwhile he lived in a state ofperpetual inward excitement which did not escape his wife. Shecould get no clue to it, however, and became all the moreforbidding in the household the more she was invaded by this whollynovel sense of difficulty in managing her husband. 

Yet she was not without a sense that if she could but contrive toalter her ways with the children it would be well for her. Mr. Gurney's cheque was safely put away in the Clough End bank, andclearly her best policy would have been to make things tolerablefor the two persons on whose proceedings--if they did but know it!--the arrival of future cheques in some measure depended. ButHannah had not the cleverness which makes the successful hypocrite. And for some time past there had been a strange unmanageable changein her feelings towards Sandy's orphans. Since Reuben had made herconscious that she was robbing them, she had gone nearer to anactive hatred than ever before. And, indeed, hatred in such a caseis the most natural outcome; for it is little else than the soul'sperverse attempt to justify to itself its own evil desire. 

David, however, when once his rage over Hannah's latest offence hadcooled, behaved to his aunt much as he had done before it. He wasmade placable by his secret hopes, and touched by Reuben'sadvances--though of these last he took no practical accountwhatever; and he must wait for his letter. So he went backungraciously to his daily tasks. Meanwhile he and Louie, on thestrength of the great _coup_ in prospect, were better friendsthan they had ever been, and his consideration for her went up ashe noticed that, when she pleased, the reckless creature could keepa secret 'as close as wax. '

The weeks, however, passed away, and still no letter came forDavid. The shepherds' meetings--first at Clough End for theCheshire side of the Scout, and then at the 'Snake Inn' for theSheffield side--when the strayed sheep of the year were restored totheir owners, came and went in due course; sheep-washing andsheep-shearing were over; the summer was halfway through; and stillno word from Mr. Ancrum. 

David, full of annoyance and disappointment, was seething withfresh plans--he and Louie spent hours discussing them at thesmithy--when suddenly an experience overtook him, which for themoment effaced all his nascent ambitions, and entirely did awaywith Louie's new respect for him. 

It was on this wise. 

Mr. Ancrum had left Clough End towards the end of June. Thecongregation to which he ministered, and to which Reuben Grievebelonged, represented one of those curious and independentdevelopments of the religious spirit which are to be foundscattered through the teeming towns and districts of northernEngland. They had no connection with any recognised religiouscommunity, but the members of it had belonged to many--to theChurch, the Baptists, the Independents, the Methodists. They weremostly mill-hands or small tradesmen, penetrated on the one sidewith the fervour, the yearnings, the strong formless poetry ofEnglish evangelical faith, and repelled on the other by variousfeatures in the different sects from which they came--by thehierarchical strictness of the Wesleyan organisation, or thelooseness of the Congregationalists, or the coldness of the Church. They had come together to seek the Lord in some way more intimate, more moving, more effectual than any they had yet found; and inthis pathetic search for the 'rainbow gold' of faith they wereperpetually brought up against the old stumbling-blocks of theunregenerate man, --the smallest egotisms, and the meanest vanities. Mr. Ancrum, for instance, had come to the Clough End 'Brethren'full of an indescribable missionary zeal. He had laboured for themnight and day, taxing his sickly frame far beyond its powers. Butthe most sordid conspiracy imaginable, led by two or three of theprominent members who thought he did not allow them enough share inthe evening meetings, had finally overthrown him, and he had goneback to Manchester a bitterer and a sadder man. 

After he left there was an interregnum, during which one or two ofthe elder 'Brethren' taught Sunday school and led the Sundayservices. But at last, in August, it became known in Clough Endthat a new minister for the 'Christian Brethren' had come down, andpublic curiosity in the Dissenting circles was keen about him. After a few weeks there began to be a buzz in the little town onthe subject of Mr. Dyson. The 'Christian Brethren' meeting-room, along low upper chamber formerly occupied by half a dozenhand-looms, was crowded on Sundays, morning and evening, not onlyby the Brethren, but by migrants from other denominations, and theSunday school, which was held in a little rickety garret off themain room, also received a large increase of members. It wasrumoured that Mr. Dyson was specially successful with boys, andthat there was an 'awakening' among some of the lowest and roughestof the Clough End lads. 

'He ha sich a way wi un, ' said a much-stirred mother to ReubenGrieve, meeting him one day in the street, 'he do seem to melt yourvarra marrow. '

Reuben went to hear the new man, was much moved, and came hometalking about him with a stammering unction, and many furtive looksat David. He had tried to remonstrate several times on the lad'sdesertion of chapel and Sunday school, but to no purpose. There wassomething in David's half contemptuous, half obstinate silence onthese occasions which for a man like Reuben made argumentimpossible. To his morbid inner sense the boy seemed to haveentered irrevocably on the broad path which leadeth to destruction. Perhaps in another year he would be drinking and thieving. With acurious fatalism Reuben felt that for the present, and till he hadmade some tangible amends to Sandy and the Unseen Powers forHannah's sin, he himself could do nothing. His hands were unclean. But some tremulous passing hopes he allowed himself to build onthis new prophet. 

Meanwhile, David heard the town-talk, and took small account of it. He supposed he should see the new-comer at Jerry's in time. Then iffolk spoke true there would be a shindy worth joining in. Meanwhile, the pressure of his own affairs made the excitement ofthe neighbourhood seem to him one more of those storms in theDissenting tea-cup, of which, boy as he was, he had known a goodmany already. 

One September evening he was walking down to Clough End, bound tothe reading-room. He had quite ceased to attend the 'Crooked Cow. 'His pennies were precious to him now, and he saved them jealously, wondering scornfully sometimes how he could ever have demeanedhimself so far as to find excitement in the liquor or the companyof the 'Cow. ' Half-way down to the town, as he was passing thefoundry, whence he had drawn the pan which had for so long made thesmithy enchanted ground to him, the big slouching appprentice whohad been his quondam friend and ally there, came out of the foundryyard just in front of him. David quickened up a little. 

'Tom, whar are yo goin?'

The other looked round at him uneasily. 

'Niver yo mind. '

The youth's uncouth clothes were carefully brushed, and his fatface, which wore an incongruous expression of anxiety anddejection, shone with washing. David studied him a moment insilence, then he said abruptly--

'Yo're goin prayer-meetin, that's what yo are. '

'An if I am, it's noa consarn o' yourn. Yo're yan o'th'unregenerate; an I'll ask yo, Davy, if happen yo're goin townway, not to talk ony o' your carnal talk to me. I'se got hindrancesenough, t' Lord knows. '

And the lad went his way, morosely hanging his head, and steppingmore rapidly as though to get rid of his companion. 

'Well, I niver!' exclaimed David, in his astonishment. 'What'swrong wi yo, Tom? Yo've got no more spunk nor a moultin hen. What'sgetten hold o' yo?''

Tom hesitated a moment. '_Th' Lord!_' he burst out at last, looking at Davy with that sudden unconscious dignity which strongfeeling can bestow for the moment on the meanest of mortals. 'He'sa harryin' me! I haven't slep this three neets for shoutin ancryin! It's th' conviction o' _sin_, Davy. Th' devil seems ahowdin me, an I conno pull away, not whativer. T' new ministersays, 'Dunnot yo pull. Let Jesus do't all. ' He's strang, He is. 'Yo're nobbut a worm. ' But I've naw _assurance_, Davy, theer'swhar it is--I've naw assurance!' he repeated, forgetting in hispain the unregenerate mind of his companion. 

David walked on beside him wondering. When he had last seen Tom hewas lounging in a half-drunken condition outside the door of the'Crooked Cow, ' cracking tipsy jokes with the passers-by. 

'Where is the prayer-meetin?' he inquired presently. 

'In owd Simes's shed--an it's late too--I mun hurry. '

'Why, theer'll be plenty o' room in old Simes's shed. It's a fearfubig place. '

'An lasst time theer was na stannin ground for a corn-boggart; an Iwudna miss ony o' Mr. Dyson's prayin, not for nothin. Good neet toyo, Davy. '

And Tom broke into a run; David, however, kept up with him. 

'P'raps I'll coom too, ' he said, with a kind of bravado, when theyhad passed the bridge and the Kinder printing works, and Clough Endwas in sight. 

Tom said nothing till they had breasted a hill, at the top of whichhe paused panting, and confronted David. 

'Noo yo'll not mak a rumpus, Davy, ' he said, mistrustfully. 

'An if do, can't a hundred or two o' yo kick me out?' asked David, mockingly. 'I'll mak no rumpus. P'raps yor Mr. Dyson'll convertme. '

And he walked on laughing. 

Tom looked darkly at him; then, as he recovered his wind, hiscountenance suddenly cleared. Satan laid a new snare for him--poorTom!--and into his tortured heart there fell a poisonous drop ofspiritual pride. Public reprobation applied to a certain order ofoffences makes a very marketable kind of fame, as the author of_Manfred_ knew very well. David in his small obscure way wassupplying another illustration of the principle. For the past yearhe had been something of a personage in Clough End--having alwayshis wits, his book-learning, his looks, and his singular parentageto start from. 

Tom--the shambling butt of his comrades--began to like the notionof going into prayer-meeting with David Grieve in tow; and eventhat bitter and very real cloud of spiritual misery lifted alittle. 

So they marched in together, Tom in front, with his head muchhigher than before; and till the minister began there were manycurious glances thrown at David. It was a prayer-meeting for boysonly, and the place was crammed with them, of all ages up toeighteen. 

It was a carpenter's workshop. Tools and timber had been as far aspossible pushed to the side, and at the end a rough platform ofloose planks had been laid across some logs so as to raise thepreacher a little. 

Soon there was a stir, and Mr. Dyson appeared. He was tall andloosely built, with the stoop from the neck and the sallow skinwhich the position of the cotton-spinner at work and the closefluffy atmosphere in which he lives tend to develop. Up to sixmonths ago, he had been a mill-hand and a Wesleyan class-leader. Now, in consequence partly of some inward crisis, partly of revoltagainst an 'unspiritual' superintendent, he had thrown up mill andMethodism together, and come to live on the doles of the ChristianBrethren at Clough End. He had been preaching on the moors alreadyduring the day, and was tired out; but the pallor of the harsh faceonly made the bright, commanding eye more noticeable. It ran overthe room, took note first of the numbers, then of individuals, marked who had been there before, who was a new-comer. The audiencefell into order and quiet before it as though a general had takencommand. 

He put his hands on his hips and began to speak without anypreface, somewhat to the boys' surprise, who had expected a prayer. The voice, as generally happens with a successful revivalistpreacher, was of fine quality, and rich in good South Lancashireintonations, and his manner was simplicity itself. 

'Suppose we put off our prayer a little bit, ' he said, in acolloquial tone, his fixed look studying the crowded benches allthe while. 'Perhaps we'll have more to pray about by-and-by.... Well, now, I haven't been long in Clough End, to be sure, but Ithink I've been long enough to get some notion of how you boys herelive--whether you work on the land, or whether you work in themills or in shops--I've been watching you a bit, perhaps you didn'tthink it; and what I'm going to do to-night is to take your livesto pieces--take them to pieces, an look close into them, as you'veseen them do at the mill, perhaps, with a machine that wantscleaning. I want to find out what's wrong wi them, what they'regood for, whose work they do--_God's or the devil's_ ... Firstlet me take the mill-hands. Perhaps I know most about their life, for I went to work in a cotton-mill when I was eight years old, andI only left it six months ago. I have seen men and women saved inthat mill, so that their whole life afterwards was a kind ofecstasy: I have seen others lost there, so that they became truechildren of the devil, and made those about them as vile andwretched as themselves. I have seen men grow rich there, and I haveseen men die there; so if there is anything I know in this world itis how factory workers spend their time--at least, I think I know. But judge for yourselves--shout to me if I'm wrong. Isn't itsomehow like this?'

And he fell into a description of the mill-hand's working day. Itwas done with knowledge, sometimes with humour, and through it allran a curious undercurrent of half-ironical passion. The audienceenjoyed it, took the points, broke in now and then with comments asthe speaker touched on such burning matters as the tyranny ofoverlookers, the temper of masters, the rubs between the differentclasses of 'hands, ' the behaviour of 'minders' to the 'piecers'employed by them, and so on. The sermon at one time was more like adialogue between preacher and congregation. David found himselfjoining in it involuntarily once or twice, so stimulating was thewhole atmosphere, and Mr. Dyson's eye was caught perforce by thetall dark fellow with the defiant carriage of the head who sat nextto Tom Mullins, and whom he did not remember to have seen before. 

But suddenly the preacher stopped, and the room fell dead silent, startled by the darkening of his look. 'Ay, ' he said, with sternsharpness. 'Ay, that's how you live--them's the things you spendyour time and your minds on. You laugh, and I laugh--not a bad sortof life, you think--a good deal of pleasure, after all, to be gotout of it. If a man must work he might do worse. _O you poorsouls!_'

The speaker stopped, as though mastering himself. His face workedwith emotion; his last words had been almost a cry of pain. Afterthe easy give and take of the opening, this change was electrical. David felt his hand tremble on his knee. 

'Answer me this!' cried the preacher, his nervous cotton-spinner'shand outstretched. 'Is there any soul here among you factory ladswho, when he wakes in the morning, _ever thinks of saying aprayer?_ Not one of you, I'll be bound! What with shovelling onone's clothes, and gulping down one's breakfast, and walking half amile to the mill, who's got time to think about prayers? God mustwait. He's always there above, you think, sitting in glory. He canlisten any time. Well, as you stand at your work--all those hours!--is there ever a moment _then_ for putting up a word inJesus' ear--Jesus, Who died for sinners? Why, no, how should therebe indeed? If you don't keep a sharp eye on your work the overlooker'ull know the reason why in double-quick time!... But there comesa break, perhaps, for one reason or another. Does the Lord get it?What a thing to ask, to be sure! Why, there are other spinnersclose by, waiting for rovings, or leaving off for "baggin, " and abit of talk and a bad word or two are a deal more fun, and comeeasier than praying. Half-past five o'clock at last--knocking-offtime. Then you begin to think of amusing yourselves. There'sloafing about the streets, which never comes amiss, and there'ssmoking and the public for you bigger ones, and there's betting onManchester races, and there's a bout of swearing every now and thento keep up your spirits, and there are other thoughts, and perhapsactions, for some of you, of which the less said in any decentChristian gathering the better! And so bedtime comes round again;still not a moment to think of God in--of the Judgment which hascome a day closer--of your sins which have grown a day heavier--ofyour soul which has sunk a day further from heaven, a day nearer tohell? Not one. You are dead tired, and mill-work begins so early. Tumble in--God can wait. He has waited fourteen, or eighteen, ortwenty years already!

'But you're not all factory hands here. I see a good many ladsI know come from the country--from the farms up Kinder or Edaleway. Well, I don't know so much about your ways as I do aboutmills; but I know some, and I can guess some. _You_ are not shutup all day with the roar of the machines in your ears, and thecotton-fluff choking your lungs. You have to live harder, perhaps. You've less chances of getting on in the world; but I declare toyou, if you're bad and godless--as some of you are--I think there'sa precious sight less excuse for you than there is for themill-hands!'

And with a startling vehemence, greater by far than he had shown inthe case of the mill-workers, he threw himself on the vices and thecallousness of the field-labourers. For were they not, day by day, and hour by hour, face to face with the Almighty in His marvellousworld--with the rising of His sun, with the flash of His lightning, with His clouds which dropped fatness, and with the heavens whichdeclare His glory? Nothing between them and the Most High, if theywould open their dull eyes and see! And more than that. Not a bitof their life, ' but had been dear to the Lord Jesus--but He hadspoken of it, taught from it, made it sacred. The shepherd herdingthe sheep--how could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the GoodShepherd? The sower scattering the seed--how could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Heavenly Sower? Oh, the crookedness ofsin! Oh, the hardness of men's hearts!

The secret of the denunciations which followed lay hidden deep inthe speaker's personal history. They were the utterances of a manwho had stood for years at the 'mules, ' catching, when he could, through the coarse panes of factory glass, the dim blue outlines ofdistant moors. _Here_ were noise, crowd, coarse jesting, meantyrannies, uncongenial company--everything which a nervous, excitable nature, tuned to poetry in the English way throughreligion, most loathed; _there_ was beauty, peace, leisure forthought, for holiness, for emotion. 

Meanwhile the mind of David Grieve rose once or twice in angryprotest. It was not fair--it was unjust--and why did Mr. Dysonalways seem to be looking at him?--flinging at him all thesescathing words about farming people's sins and follies? He wasshaken and excited. Oratory, of any sort, never failed to stir himextraordinarily. Once even he would have jumped up to speak, butTom Mullins's watchful hand closed on his arm. Davy shook it offangrily, but was perforce reminded of his promise. And Mr. Dysonwas swift in all things. The pitiless sentences dropped; thespeaker, exhausted, wiped his brow and pondered a moment; and thelads from the farms about, most of whom David knew by sight, wereleft staring at the floor, some inclined to laugh by reaction, others crimson and miserable. 

Well; so God was everywhere forgotten--in the fields and inthe mill. The greedy, vicious hours went by, and God stillwaited--waited. Would he wait for ever?

'_Nay!_'

The intense, low-spoken word sent a shiver through the room. Therevivalist passion had been mounting rapidly amongst the listeners, and the revivalist sense divined what was coming. To his dying dayDavid, at least, never forgot the picture of a sinner's deathagony, a sinner's doom, which followed. As to the first, it wasvery quiet and colloquial. The preacher dwelt on the tortured body, the choking breath, the failing sight, the talk of relations andfriends round the bed. 

'Ay, poor fellow, he'll not lasst mich longer; t' doctor's gienhim up--and a good thing too, for his sufferins are terr'ble tosee. '

'And your poor dying ears will catch what they say. Then will yourfear come upon you as a storm, and your calamity as a whirlwind. Such a fear!

'Once, my lads--long ago--I saw a poor girl caught by her hair inone of the roving machines in the mill I used to work at. Threeminutes afterwards they tore away her body from the iron teethwhich had destroyed her. But I, a lad of twelve, had seen her facejust as the thing caught her, and if I live to be a hundred I shallnever forget that face--that horrible, horrible fear convulsing it. 

'But that fear, my boys, was as _nothing_ to the sinner's fearat death! Only a few more hours--a few more minutes, perhaps--andthen _judgment_! All the pleasant loafing and lounging, allthe eating and drinking, the betting and swearing, the warm sun, the kind light, the indulgent parents and friends left behind;nothing for ever and ever but the torments which belong to sin, andwhich even the living God can no more spare you and me if we die insin than the mill-engine, once set going, can spare the poorcreature that meddles with it. 

'Well; but perhaps in that awful last hour you try to pray--to callon the Saviour. But, alas! alas! prayer and faith have to belearnt, like cotton-spinning. Let no man count on learning thatlesson for the asking. While your body has been enjoying itself insin, your soul has been dying--dying; and when at the last you bidit rise and go to the Father, you will find it just as helpless asyour poor paralysed limbs. It cannot rise, it has no strength; itcannot go, for it knows not the way. No hope; no hope. Down itsinks, and the black waters of hell close upon it for ever!'

Then followed a sort of vision of the lost--delivered in shortabrupt sentences--the form of the speaker drawn rigidly upmeanwhile to its full height, the long arm outstretched. Theutterance had very little of the lurid materialism, the grotesquehorror of the ordinary ranter's hell. But it stole upon theimagination little by little, and possessed it at last with anall-pervading terror. Into it, to begin with, had gone the wholelife-blood and passion of an agonised soul. The man speaking hadhimself graven the terrors of it on his inmost nature through manya week of demoniacal possession. But since that original experienceof fire which gave it birth, there had come to its elaboration astrange artistic instinct. Day after day the preacher had repeatedit to hushed congregations, and with every repetition, almost, there had come a greater sharpening of the light and shade, akeener sense of what would tell and move. He had given it on themoors that afternoon, but he gave it better tonight, for on thewild walk across the plateau of the Peak some fresh illustrations, drawn from its black and fissured solitude, had suggestedthemselves, and he worked them out as he went, with a kind of joy, watching their effect. Yet the man was, in his way, a saint, andaltogether sincere--so subtle a thing is the life of the spirit. 

In the middle, Tom Mullins, David's apprentice-friend, suddenlybroke out into loud groans, rocking himself to and fro on the form. A little later, a small fair-haired boy of twelve sprang up fromthe form where he had been sitting trembling, and rushed into thespace between the benches and the preacher, quite unconscious ofwhat he was doing. 

'Sir!' he said; 'oh, sir!--please--I didn't want to say them badwords this mornin; I didn't, sir; it wor t' big uns made me; theysaid they'd duck me--an it do hurt that bad. Oh, sir, please!'

And the little fellow stood wringing his hands, the tears coursingdown his cheeks. 

The minister stopped, frowning, and looked at him. Then a smilebroke on the set face, he stepped up to the lad, threw his armround him, and drew him up to his side fronting the room. 

'My boy, ' he said, looking down at him tenderly, 'you and I, thankGod, are still in the land of the _living_; there is stilltime to-night--this very minute--to be saved! Ay, saved, for everand ever, by the blood of the Lamb. Look away from yourselves--awayfrom sin--away from hell--to the blessed Lord, that suffered anddied and rose again; just for what? For this only--that He might, with His own pierced hands, draw every soul here to-night, andevery soul in the wide world that will but hear His voice, out ofthe clutches of the devil, and out of the pains of hell, and gatherit close and safe into His everlasting arms!'

There was a great sob from the whole room. Rough lads from theupland farms, shop-boys, mill-hands, strained forward, listening, thirsting, responding to every word. 

_Redemption--Salvation--_ the deliverance of the soul fromitself--thither all religion comes at last, whether for the ranteror the philosopher. To the enriching of that conception, to thegradual hewing it out in historical shape, have gone the noblestpoetry, the purest passion, the intensest spiritual vision of thehighest races, since the human mind began to work. And thehistorical shape may crumble; but the need will last and thetravail will go on; for man's quest of redemption is but theeternal yielding of the clay in the hands of the potter, theeternal answer of the creature to the urging indwelling Creator. 

CHAPTER X

Half an hour later, after the stormy praying and singing which hadsucceeded Mr. Dyson's address, David found himself tramping up therough and lonely road leading to the high Kinder valley. The lightsof Clough End had disappeared; against the night sky the dark woodyside of Mardale Moor was still visible; beneath it sang the river;a few stars wore to be seen; and every now and then the windows ofa farm shone out to guide the wayfarer. But David stumbled on, noticing nothing. At the foot of the steep hill leading to the farmhe stopped a moment, and leant over the gate. The little lad's crywas in his ears. 

Presently he leapt the gate impatiently, and ran up whistling. Supper was over, but Hannah ungraciously brought him out some coldbacon and bread. Louie hung about him while he ate, studying himwith quick furtive eyes. 

'Whar yo bin?' she said abruptly, when Hannah had gone to the backkitchen for a moment. Reuben was dozing by the fire over the localpaper. 

'Nowhere as concerns yo, ' said David, shortly. He finished hissupper and went and sat on the steps. The dogs came and put theirnoses on his knees. He pulled absently at their coats, lookingstraight before him at the dark point of Kinder Low. 

'Whar yo bin?' said Louie's voice again in his ear. She hadsquatted down on the step behind him. 

'Be off wi yer, ' said David, angrily, getting up in order to escapeher. 

But she pursued him across the farmyard. 

'Have yo got a letter?'

'No, I haven't. '

'Did yo ask at t' post-office?'

'No, I didn't. '

'An why didn't yo?'

'Because I didn't want--soa there--get away. ' And he stalked off. Louie, left behind, chewed the cud of reflection in the darkness. 

Presently, to his great disgust, as he was sitting under a wall ofone of the pasture-fields, hidden, as he conceived, from all theworld by the night, he heard the rustle of a dress, the click of astone, and there was Louie dangling her legs above him, havingattacked him in the rear. 

'Uncle Reuben's talkin 'is stuff about Mr. Dyson. I seed 'im gooinpasst Wigsons' this afternoon. He's nowt--he's common, he is. '

The thin scornful voice out of the dark grated on him intolerably. He bent forward and shut his ears tight with both his hands. Tojudge from the muffled sounds he heard, Louie went on talking for awhile; but at last there had been silence for so long, that he tookhis hands away, thinking she must have gone. 

'Yo've been at t' prayer-meetin, I tell yo, an yo're a great stupidmuffin-yed, soa theer. '

And a peremptory little kick on his shoulder from a substantialshoe gave the words point. 

He sprang up in a rage, ran down the hill, jumped over a wall ortwo, and got rid of her. But he seemed to hear her elfish laugh forsome time after. As for himself, he could not analyse what had comeover him. But not even the attraction of an unopened parcel ofbooks he had carried home that afternoon from Clough End--a loanfrom a young stationer he had lately made acquaintance with--coulddraw him back to the farm. He sat on and on in the dark. And whenat last, roused by the distant sounds of shutting up the house, heslunk in and up to bed, he tossed about for a long time, and wokeup often in the night. The tyrannous power of another man's faithwas upon him. He could not get Mr. Dyson out of his head. How onearth could anybody be so _certain_? It was monstrous that anyone should be. It was canting stuff. 

Still, next day, hearing by chance that the new-comer was going topreach at a hamlet the other side of Clough End, he went, found alarge mixed meeting mostly of mill-hands, and the tide ofRevivalism rolling high. This time Mr. Dyson picked him out atonce--the face and head indeed were easily remembered. After thesermon, when the congregation were filing out, leaving behind thosemore particularly distressed in mind to be dealt with moreintimately in a small prayer-meeting by Mr. Dyson and aprayer-leader, the minister suddenly stepped aside from a group ofpeople he was talking with, and touched David on the arm as he wasmaking for the door. 

'Won't you stay?' he said peremptorily. 'Don't trifle with the Lord. '

And his feverish divining eyes seemed to look the boy through andthrough. David flushed, and pushed past him with some inarticulateanswer. When he found himself in the open air he was half angry, half shaken with emotion. And afterwards a curious instinct, thesullen instinct of the wild creature shrinking from a possiblecaptor, made him keep himself as much as possible out of Mr. Dyson's way. At the prayer-meetings and addresses, which followedeach other during the next fortnight in quick succession, David wasalmost always present; but he stood at the back, and as soon as thegeneral function was over he fled. The preacher's strong will waspiqued. He began to covet the boy's submission disproportionately, and laid schemes for meeting with him. But David evaded them all. 

Other persons, however, succeeded better. Whenever the revivalistfever attacks a community, it excites in a certain number ofindividuals, especially women, an indescribable zeal forproselytising. The signs of 'conviction' in any hithertounregenerate soul are marked at once, and the 'saved' make a preyof it, showing a marvellous cunning and persistence in its pursuit. 

One day a woman, the wife of a Clough End shoemaker, slightly knownto David, met him on the moors. 

'Will yo coom to-night?' she said, nodding to him. 'Theer'll beprayin' at our house--about half a dozen. '

Then, as the boy stopped, amazed and hesitating, she fixed him withher shining ecstatic eyes. 

'Awake, thou that sleepest, ' she said under her breath, 'and Christshall give thee light. '

She had been carrying a bundle to a distant farm. A child was inher arms, and she looked dragged and worn. But all the way down themoor as she came towards him David had heard her singing hymns. 

He hung his head and passed on. But in the evening he went, foundthree or four other boys his own age or older, the woman, and herhusband. The woman sang some of the most passionate Methodisthymns; the husband, a young shoemaker, already half dead of asthmaand bronchitis, told his 'experiences' in a voice broken byincessant coughing; one of the boys, a rough specimen, known toDavid as a van-boy from some calico-printing works in theneighbourhood, prayed aloud, breaking down into sobs in the middle;and David, at first obstinately silent, found himself joiningbefore the end in the groans and 'Amens, ' by force of a contagiousexcitement he half despised but could not withstand. 

The little prayer-meeting, however, broke up somewhat in confusion. There was not much real difference of opinion at this time inClough End, which was, on the whole, a strongly religious town. Even the Churchmanship of it was decidedly evangelical, ready atany moment to make common cause with Dissent against Ritualism, ifsuch a calamity should ever threaten the little community, and veryready to join, more or less furtively, in the excitements ofDissenting revivals. Jerry Timmins and his set represented the onlyserious blot on what the pious Clough Endian might reasonablyregard as a fair picture. But this set contained some sharpfellows--provided outlet for a considerable amount of energy of araw and roving sort, and, no doubt, did more to maintain the mentalequilibrium of the small factory-town than any enthusiast on theother side would for a moment have allowed. The excitement whichfollowed in the train of a man like Mr. Dyson roused, of course, ananswering hubbub among the Timminsites. The whole of Jerry's circlewas stirred up, in fact, like a hive of wasps; their ribaldry grewwith what it fed on; and every day some new and exquisite method ofharrying the devout occurred to the more ingenious among them. 

David had hitherto escaped notice. But on this evening, whilehe and his half-dozen companions were still on their knees, they were first disturbed by loud drummings on the shoemaker'sdoor, which opened directly into the little room where theywere congregated; and then, when they emerged into the street, they found a mock prayer-meeting going on outside, with all theusual 'manifestations' of revivalist fervour--sighs, groans, shouts, and the rest of it--in full flow. At the sight of DavidGrieve there were first stares and then shrieks of laughter. 

'I say, Davy, ' cried a drunken young weaver, sidling up to him onhis knees and embracing him from behind, 'my heart's real touched. Gie me yor coat, Davy; it's better nor mine, Davy; and I'm yorChristian brother, Davy. '

The emotion of this appeal drew uproarious merriment from the knotof Secularists. David, in a frenzy, kicked out, so that hisassailant dropped him with a howl. The weaver's friends closed uponthe 'Ranters, ' who had to fight their way through. It was not tillthey had gained the outskirts of the town that the shower of stonesceased, and that they could pause to take stock of their losses. Then it appeared that, though all were bruised, torn, and furious, some were inclined to take a mystical joy in persecution, and tofind compensation in certain plain and definite predictions as tothe eternal fate in store for 'Jerry Timmins's divils. ' David, onthe other hand, was much more inclined to vent his wrath on his ownside than on the Timminsites. 

'Why can't yo keep what yo're doin to yorsels?' he called outfiercely to the knot of panting boys, as he faced round upon themat the gate leading to the Kinder road. 'Yo're a parcel o'fools--always chatterin and clatterin. '

The others defended themselves warmly. 'Them Timmins lot' werealways spying about. They daren't attack the large meetings, butthey had a diabolical way of scenting out the small ones. Themeetings at the shoemaker's had been undisturbed for some fewnights, then a Timminsite passing by had heard hymns, probablylistened at the keyhole, and of course informed the main body ofthe enemy. 

'They're like them nassty earwigs, ' said one boy in disgust, 'they'll wriggle in onywheres. '

'Howd yor noise!' said David, peremptorily. 'If yo wanted to keepout o' their way, yo could do't fasst enough. '

'How!' they inquired, with equal curtness. 

'Yo needn't meet in th' town at aw. Theer's plenty o' places up ont' moor, ' and he waved his hand towards the hills behind him, lyingclear in the autumn moonlight. ' Theer's th' owd smithy--who'd findyo there?'

The mention of the smithy was received as an inspiration. There isa great deal of pure romantic temper roused by these revivalisticoutbreaks in provincial England. The idea of the moors and the oldruin as setting for a secret prayer-meeting struck the group ofexcited lads as singularly attractive. They parted cheerfully uponit, in spite of their bruises. 

David, however, walked home fuming. The self-abandonment of therevival had been all along wellnigh intolerable to him--and now, that he should have allowed the Timminsites to know anything abouthis prayers! He very nearly broke off from it altogether in hisproud disgust. 

However he did ultimately nothing of the sort. As soon as he grewcool again, he was as much tormented as before by what was atbottom more an intellectual curiosity than a moral anguish. Therewas _some_ moral awakening in it; he had some real qualmsabout sin, some real aspirations after holiness, and, so far, theself-consciousness which had first stirred at Haworth was deepenedand fertilised. But the thirst for emotion and sensation was themain force at work. He could not make out what these religiouspeople meant by their 'experiences, ' and for the first time hewanted to make out. So when it was proposed to him to meet at thesmithy on a certain Saturday evening, he agreed. 

Meanwhile, Louie was sitting up in bed every night, with her handsround her sharp knees, and her black brows knit over David'sfollies. It seemed to her he no longer cared 'a haporth' aboutgetting a letter from Mr. Ancrum, about going to Manchester, aboutall those entrancing anti-meat schemes which were to lead so easilyto a paradise of free 'buying' for both of them. Whenever she triedto call him back to these things he shook her off impatiently, andtheir new-born congeniality to each other had been all swamped inthis craze for 'shoutin hollerin' people she despised with all herheart. When she flew out at him, he just avoided her. Indeed, heavoided her now at all times, whether she flew out or not. Therewas an invincible heathenism about Louie, which made her thenatural enemy of any 'awakened' person. 

The relation of the elders in the farm to the new developmentin David was a curious one. Hannah viewed it with a secretsatisfaction. Christians have less time than other people--such, at least, had been her experience with Reuben--to spend inthirsting for the goods of this world. The more David went toprayer-meetings, the less likely was he to make inadmissibledemands on what belonged to him. As for poor Reuben, he seemed tohave got his wish; while he and Hannah had been doing their best todrive Sandy's son to perdition through a downward course of'loafing, ' God had sent Mr. Dyson to put Davy back on the rightroad. But he was ill at ease; he watched the excitement, which allthe lad's prickly reticence could not hide from those about him, with strange and variable feelings. As a Christian, he should haverejoiced; instead, the uncle and nephew shunned each other morethan ever, and shunned especially all talk of the revival. Perhapsthe whole situation--the influence of the new man, of the localtalk, of the quickened spiritual life around him, did but aggravatethe inner strain in Reuben. Perhaps his wife's satisfaction, whichhis sharpened conscience perceived and understood, troubled himintolerably. At any rate, his silence and disquiet grew, and hisonly pleasure lay, more than ever, in those solitary cogitations wehave already spoken of. 

The 15th of October approached--as it happened, the Friday beforethe smithy prayer-meeting. On that day of the year, according toancient and invariable custom, the Yorkshire stock--steers, heifers, young horses--which are transferred to the Derbyshirefarms on the 15th of May, are driven back to their Yorkshireowners, with all the fatness of Derbyshire pastures showing ontheir sleek sides. Breeders and farmers meet again at Woodhead, just within the Yorkshire border. The animals are handed over totheir owners, paid for at so much a head, and any preventibledamage or loss occurring among them is reckoned against the farmerreturning them, according to certain local rules. 

As the middle of the month came nearer, Reuben began to talkdespondently to Hannah of his probable gains from his Yorkshire'boarders. ' It had been a cold wet summer; he was 'feart' theowners would think he might have taken more care of some of theanimals, especially of the young horses, and he mentioned certainailments springing from damp and exposure for which he might beheld responsible. Hannah grew irritated and anxious. The receiptsfrom this source were the largest they could reckon upon in theyear. But the fields on which the Yorkshire animals pastured wereat some distance from the house; this department of the farmbusiness was always left wholly to Reuben; and, with much grumblingand scolding, she took his word for it as to the probable lownessof the sum he should bring back. 

David, meanwhile, was sometimes a good deal puzzled by Reuben'sbehaviour. It seemed to him that his uncle told some queer tales athome about their summer stock. And when Reuben announced hisintention of going by himself to Woodhead, and leaving David athome, the boy was still more astonished. 

However, he was glad enough to be spared the tramp with a set ofpeople whose ways and talk were more and more uncongenial to him;and after his uncle's departure he lay for hours hidden from Louieamong the heather, sometimes arguing out imaginary arguments withMr. Dyson, sometimes going through passing thrills of emotion andfear. What was meant, he wanted to know, by '_the sense ofpardon'?_ Person after person at the prayer-meetings he had beenfrequenting had spoken of attaining it with ecstasy, or of beingstill shut out from it with anguish. But how, after all, did itdiffer from pardoning yourself? You had only, it seemed to him, tothink very hard that you were pardoned, and the feeling came. How could anybody tell it was more than that? David racked hisbrain endlessly over the same subject. Who could be sure that'experience' was not all moonshine? But he was as yet much tootouched and shaken by what he had been going through to draw anytrenchant conclusions. He asked the question, however, and thereinlay the great difference between him and the true stuff ofMethodism. 

Meanwhile, in his excitement, he, for the first time, ceased to goto the Dawsons' as usual. To begin with, they dropped out of a mindwhich was preoccupied with one of the first strong emotions ofadolescence. Then, some one told him casually that 'Lias was moreailing than usual, and that Margaret was in much trouble. He waspricked with remorse, but just because Margaret would be sure toquestion him, a raw shyness came in and held him back from theeffort of going. 

On the Saturday evening David, having ingeniously given Louie theslip, sped across the fields to the smithy. It was past fiveo'clock, and the light was fading. But the waning gold of thesunset as he jumped the wall on to the moor made the whole autumnalearth about him, and the whole side of the Scout, one splendour. Such browns and pinks among the withering ling; such gleaminggreens among the bilberry leaf; such reds among the turning ferns;such fiery touches on the mountain ashes overhanging the Red Brook!The western light struck in great shafts into the bosom of theScout; and over its grand encompassing mass hung some hoveringclouds just kindling into rosy flame. As the boy walked along hesaw and thrilled to the beauty which lay spread about him. His moodwas simple, and sweeter than usual. He felt a passionate need ofexpression, of emotion. There was a true disquiet, a genuinedisgust with self at the bottom of him, and God seemed more thanimaginatively near. Perhaps, on this day of his youth, of all days, he was closest to the Kingdom of Heaven. 

At the smithy he found about a dozen persons, mostly youths, justcome out from the two or three mills which give employment toClough End, and one rather older than the rest, a favouriteprayer-leader in Sunday meetings. At first, everything feltstrange; the boys eyed one another; even David as he stepped inamong them had a momentary reaction, and was more conscious of thepresence of a red-haired fellow there with whom he had fought amighty fight on the Huddersfield expedition, than of any spiritualneeds. 

However, the prayer-leader knew his work. He was slow and pompous;his tone with the Almighty might easily have roused a hostile senseof humour; but Dissent in its active and emotional forms kills thesense of humour; and, besides, there was a real, ungainly power inthe man. Every phrase of his opening prayer was hackneyed; everygesture uncouth. But his heart was in it, and religious convictionis the most infectious thing in the world. He warmed, and hiscongregation warmed with him. The wild scene, too, did itspart--the world of darkening moors spread out before them; themountain wall behind them; the October wind sighing round theruined walls; the lonely unaccustomed sounds of birds and water. When he ceased, boy after boy broke out into more or lessincoherent praying. Soon in the dusk they could no longer see eachother's faces; and then it was still easier to break throughreserve. 

At last David found himself speaking. What he said was at firstalmost inaudible, for he was kneeling between the wall and the panwhich had been his childish joy, with his face and arms crushedagainst the stones. But when he began the boys about pricked uptheir ears, and David was conscious suddenly of a deepened silence. There were warm tears on his hidden cheeks; but it pleased himkeenly they should listen so, and he prayed more audibly andfreely. Then, when his voice dropped at last, the prayer-leadergave out the familiar hymn, 'Come, O thou Traveller unknown:'--

Come, O thou Traveller unknown, Whom still I hold, but cannot see!My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee; With Theeall night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day. 

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal Thy new unutterable name? Tell me, Istill beseech thee, tell--To know it now resolved I am. Wrestling, I will not let thee go, Till I thy name, thy nature know. 

'Tis Love! 'tis Love--thou lovest me! I hear thy whisper in myheart; The morning breaks, the shadows flee, Pure universal Lovethou art; To me, to all, thy mercies move, Thy nature and thy nameis Love. 

Again and again the lines rose on the autumn air; each time thehymn came to an end it was started afresh, the sound of itspreading far and wide into the purple breast of Kinder Scout. Atlast the painful sobbing of poor Tom Mullins almost drowned thesinging. The prayer-leader, himself much moved, bent over andseized him by the arm. 

'Look to Jesus, Tom. Lay hold on the Saviour. Don't think of yoursins; they're done away i' th' blood o' the Lamb. Howd Him fast. Say, "I believe, " and the Lord ull deliver yo. '

With a cry, the great hulking lad sprang to his feet, and claspedhis arms above his head--

'I do believe--I will believe. Help me, Lord Jesus. Oh, I'm saved!I'm saved!' And he remained standing in an ecstasy, looking to thesky above the Scout, where the red sunset glow still lingered. 

'Hallelujah! hallelujah! Thanks be to God!' cried theprayer-leader, and the smithy resounded in the growing darknesswith similar shouts. David was almost choking with excitement. Hewould have given worlds to spring to Tom Mullins's side andproclaim the same faith. But the inmost heart of him, his realself, seemed to him at this testing moment something dead and cold. No heavenly voice spoke to _him_, David Grieve. A genuine pangof religious despair seized him. He looked out over the moorthrough a gap in the stones. There was a dim path below; the fancystruck him that Christ, the 'Traveller unknown, ' was passing alongit. He had already stretched out His hand of blessing to TomMullins. 

'To me! to me, too!' David cried under his breath, carried away bythe haunting imagination, and straining his eyes into the dusk. Hadthe night opened to his sight there and then in a vision of glory, he would have been no whit surprised. 

Hark!--what was that sound?

A weird scream rose on the wind. The startled congregation in thesmithy scrambled to their feet. Another scream, nearer apparentlythan the first, and then a loud wailing, broken every few secondsby a strange slight laugh, of which the distance seemed quiteindefinite. Was it close by, or beyond the Red Brook?

The prayer-leader turned white, the boys stood huddled round him inevery attitude of terror. Again the scream, and the little ghostlylaugh! Looking at each other wildly, the whole congregation brokefrom the smithy down the hill. But the leader stopped himself. 

'It's mebbe soom one in trouble, ' he said manfully, every limbtrembling. 'We mun go and see, my lads. ' And he rushed off in thedirection whence the first sound had seemed to come--towards theRed Brook--half a dozen of the bolder spirits following. The reststood cowering on the slope under the smithy. David meanwhile hadclimbed the ruined wall, and stood with head strained forward, hiseyes sweeping the moor. But every outline was sinking fast into thegulf of the night; only a few indistinct masses--a cluster ofgorse-bushes, a clump of mountain ash--still showed here and there. 

The leader made for one of these darker patches on themountain-side, led on always by the recurrent screams. He reachedit; it was a patch of juniper overhanging the Red Brook--whensuddenly from behind it there shot up a white thing, taller thanthe tallest man, with nodding head and outspread arms, and suchlaughter--so faint, so shrill, so evil, breaking midway into ahoarse angry yell. 

'_Jenny Crum! Jenny Crum!_' cried the whole band with onevoice, and, wheeling round, they ran down the Scout, joined by thecontingent from the smithy, some of them falling headlong among theheather in their agony of flight, others ruthlessly knocking overthose in front of them who seemed to be in their way. In a fewseconds, as it seemed, the whole Scout was left to itself and thenight. Footsteps, voices, all were gone--save for one long peal ofmost human, but still elfish, mirth, which came from the Red Brook. 

CHAPTER XI

A dark figure sprang down from the wall of the smithy, leapt alongthe heather, and plunged into the bushes along the brook. A cry inanother key was heard. 

David emerged, dragging something behind him. 

'Yo limb, yo! How dare yo, yo little beast? Yo impident littletoad!' And in a perfect frenzy of rage he shook what she held. ButLouie--for naturally it was Louie--wrenched herself away, and stoodconfronting him, panting, but exultant. 

'I freetened 'em! just didn't I? Cantin humbugs! "_Jenny Crum!Jenny Crum!_"' And, mimicking the voice of the leader, she brokeagain into an hysterical shout of laughter. 

David, beside himself, hit out and struck her. It was a heavy blowwhich knocked her down, and for a moment seemed to stun her. Thenshe recovered her senses, and flew at him in a mad passion, weepingwildly with the smart and excitement. 

He held her off, ashamed of himself, till she flung away, shriekingout--

'Go and say its prayers, do--good little boy--poor little babby. Ugh, yo coward! hittin gells, that's all yo're good for. '

And she ran off so fast that all sight of her was lost in a fewseconds. Only two or three loud sobs seemed to come back from thedark hollow below. As for the boy, he stopped a second todisentangle his feet from the mop and the tattered sheet wherewithLouie had worked her transformation scene. Then he dashed up thehill again, past the smithy, and into a track leading out on to thehigh road between Castleton and Clough End. He did not care wherehe went. Five minutes ago he had been almost in heaven; now he wasin hell. He hated Louie, he hated the boys who had cut and run, heloathed himself. No!--religion was not for such as he. No morecanting--no more praying--away with it! He seemed to shake all theemotion of the last few weeks from him with scorn and haste, as heran on, his strong young limbs battling with the wind. 

Presently he emerged on the high road. To the left, a hundred yardsaway, were the lights of a wayside inn; a farm waggon and a pair ofhorses standing with drooped and patient heads were drawn up on thecobbles in front of it. David felt in his pockets. There waseighteenpence in them, the remains of half-a-crown a strangegentleman had given him in Clough End the week before for stoppinga runaway horse. In he stalked. 

'Two penn'orth of gin--hot!' he commanded. 

The girl serving the bar brought it and stared at him curiously. The glaring paraffin lamp above his head threw the frowning browsand wild eyes, the crimson cheeks, heaving chest, and tumbled hair, into strong light and shade. 'That's a quare un!' she thought, butshe found him handsome all the same, and, retreating behind thebeer-taps, she eyed him surreptitiously. She was a raw countrylass, not yet stript of all her natural shyness, or she would havebegun to 'chaff' him. 

'Another!' said David, pushing forward his glass. This time helooked at her. His reckless gaze travelled over her coarse andcomely face, her full figure, her bare arms. He drank the glass shegave him, and yet another. She began to feel half afraid of him, and moved away. The hot stimulant ran through his veins. Suddenlyhe felt his head whirling from the effects of it, but that horribleclutch of despair was no longer on him. He raised himself defiantlyand turned to go, staggering along the floor. He was near theentrance when an inner door opened, and the carter, who had beengossiping in a room behind with the landlord, emerged. He startedwith astonishment when he saw David. 

'Hullo, Davy, what are yo after?'

David turned, nearly losing his balance as he did so, and clutchingat the bar for support. He found himself confronted with JimWigson--his old enemy--who had been to Castleton with a load of hayand some calves, and was on his way back to Kinder again. When hesaw who it was clinging to the bar counter, Jim first stared andthen burst into a hoarse roar of laughter. 

'Coom here! coom here!' he shouted to the party in the backparlour. 'Here's a rum start! I do declare this beats cock-fighting!--this do. Damn my eyes iv it doosn't! Look at that yoong limb. Whythey towd me down at Clough End this mornin he'd been took "serious"--took wi a prayin turn--they did. Look at un! It ull tak 'im tillto-morrow mornin to know his yed from his heels. He! he! he! Yo'rea deep un, Davy--yo are. But yo'll get a bastin when Hannah seesyo--prayin or no prayin. '

And Jim went off into another guffaw, pointing his whip the whileat Davy. Some persons from the parlour crowded in, enjoying thefun. David did not see them. He reached out his hand for the glasshe had just emptied, and steadying himself by a mighty effort, flung it swift and straight in Jim Wigson's face. There was a crashof fragments, a line of blood appeared on the young carter's chin, and a chorus of wrath and alarm rose from the group behind him. With a furious oath Jim placed a hand on the bar, vaulted it, andfell upon the lad. David defended himself blindly, but he was dazedwith drink, and his blows and kicks rained aimlessly on Wigson'siron frame. In a second or two Jim had tripped him up, and stoodover him, his face ablaze with vengeance and conquest. 

'Yo yoong varmint--yo cantin yoong hypocrite! I'll teach yo to showimperence to your betters. Yo bin allus badly i' want o' soombodyto tak yo down a peg or two. Now I'll show yo. I'll not fight yo, but I'll flog yo--_flog yo_--d' yo hear?'

And raising his carter's whip he brought it down on the boy's backand legs. David tried desperately to rise--in vain--Jim had him bythe collar; and four or five times more the heavy whip came down, avenging with each lash many a slumbering grudge in the victor'ssoul. 

Then Jim felt his arm firmly caught. 'Now, Mister Wigson, ' cried thelandlord--a little man, but a wiry--'yo'll not get me into trooble. Let th' yoong ripstitch go. Yo've gien him a taste he'll not forgetin a week o' Sundays. Let him go. '

Jim, with more oaths, struggled to get free, but the landlord hadquelled many rows in his time, and his wrists were worthy of hiscalling. Meanwhile his wife helped up the boy. David was no sooneron his feet than he made another mad rush for Wigson, and it neededthe combined efforts of landlord, landlady, and servant-girl topart the two again. Then the landlord, seizing David from behind by'the scuft of the neck, ' ran him out to the door in a twinkling. 

'Go 'long wi yo! An if yo coom raisin th' divil here again, see iv Idon't gie yo a souse on th' yed mysel. ' And he shoved his chargeout adroitly and locked the door. 

David staggered across the road as though still under the impetusgiven by the landlord's shove. 

The servant-girl took advantage of the loud cross-fire of talkwhich immediately rose at the bar round Jim Wigson to run to acorner window and lift the blind. The boy was sitting on a heap ofstones for mending the road, looking at the inn. Other passers-byhad come in, attracted by the row, and the girl slipped outunperceived, opened the side door, and ran across the road. It hadbegun to rain, and the drops splashed in her face. 

David was sitting leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the lightedwindows of the house opposite. The rays which came from them showedher that his nose and forehead were bleeding, and that the bloodwas dripping unheeded on the boy's clothes. He was utterlypowerless, and trembling all over, but his look 'gave her a turn. '

'Now, luke here, ' she said, bending down to him. 'Yo jes go whoam. Wigson, he'll be out direckly, an he'll do yo a hurt iv he findsyo. Coom, I'll put yo i' the way for Kinder. '

And before he could gather his will to resist, she had dragged himup with her strong countrywoman's arms and was leading him alongthe road to the entrance of the lane he had come by. 

'Lor, yo _are_ bleedin, ' she said compassionately; 'he shud hathowt as how yo wor nobbut a lad--an it wor he begun aggin fust. He's a big bully is Wigson. ' And impulsively raising her apron sheapplied it to the blood, David quite passive all the while. Thegreat clumsy lass nearly kissed him for pity. 

'Now then, ' she said at last, turning him into the lane, 'yo knowyour way, an I mun goo, or they'll be raisin the parish arter me. Gude neet to yo, an keep out o' Wigson's seet. Rest yursel a bittheer--agen th' wall. '

And leaving him leaning against the wall, she reluctantly departed, stopping to look back at him two or three times in spite of therain, till the angle of the wall hid him from view. 

The rain poured down and the wind whistled through the rough lane. David presently slipped down upon a rock jutting from the wall, anda fevered, intermittent sleep seized him--the result of the spiritshe had been drinking. His will could oppose no resistance; he slepton hour after hour, sheltered a little by an angle of the wall, butstill soaked by rain and buffeted by the wind. 

When he awoke he staggered suddenly to his feet. The smart of hisback and legs recalled him, after a few moments of bewilderment, toa mental torture he had scarcely yet had time to feel. He--DavidGrieve--had been beaten--thrashed like a dog--by Jim Wigson! Theremembered fact brought with it a degradation of mind and body--acomplete unstringing of the moral fibres, which made even revengeseem an impossible output of energy. A nature of this sort, withsuch capacities and ambitions, carries about with it a sense ofsupremacy, a natural, indispensable self-conceit which acts as thesheath to the bud, and is the condition of healthy development. Break it down and you bruise and jeopardise the flower of life. 

Jim Wigson!--the coarse, ignorant lout with whom he had been, moreor less, at feud since his first day in Kinder, whom he haddespised with all the strength of his young vanity. By to-morrowall Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh. 'What! yowhopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim? Wal, an a good thing, too!A lick now an again ud do _him_ noa harm--a cantankerous yoongrascot--pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say. ' David couldhear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him. It burntinto his ear. 

He groped his way through the lane and on to the moor--tremblingwith physical exhaustion, the morbid frenzy within him choking hisbreath, the storm beating in his face. What was that black mass tohis right?--the smithy? A hard sob rose in his throat. Oh, he hadbeen so near to an ideal world of sweetness, purity, holiness! Wasit a year ago?

With great difficulty he found the crossing-place in the brook, andthen the gap in the wall which led him into the farm fields. Whenhe was still a couple of fields off the house he heard the dogsbeginning. But he heard them as though in a dream. 

At last he stood at the door and fumbled for the handle. Locked!Why, what time could it be? He tried to remember what time he hadleft home, but failed. At last he knocked, and just as he did so heperceived through a chink of the kitchen shutter a light on thescrubbed deal table inside, and Hannah's figure beside it. Atthe sound of the knocker Hannah rose, put away her work withdeliberation, snuffed the candle, and then moved with it to thedoor of the kitchen. The boy watched her with a quickly beatingheart and whirling brain. She opened the door. 

'Whar yo bin?' she demanded sternly. 'I'd like to know what businessyo have to coom in this time o' neet, an your uncle fro whoam. Yo've bin in mischief, I'll be bound. Theer's Louie coom back wi ablack eye, an jes because she woan't say nowt about it, I know asit's yo are at t' bottom o' 't. I'm reg'lar sick o' sich doins in adecent house. Whar yo bin, I say?'

And this time she held the candle up so as to see him. She had beensitting fuming by herself, and was in one of her blackest tempers. David's misdemeanour was like food to a hungry instinct. 

'I went to prayer-meetin, ' the lad said thickly. It seemed to himas though the words came all in the wrong order. 

Hannah bent forward and gave a sudden cry. 

'Why, yo bin fightin! Yo're all ower blood! Yo bin fightin, and I'll bet a thousand pund yo draw'd in Louie too. And_sperrits_! Why, yo _smell_ o' sperrits! Yo're jes _reekin_wi 'em! Wal, upon my word!'--and Hannah drew herself back, flinging every slow word in his face like a blow. 'Yo featureyour mither, yo do, boath on you, pretty close. I allus said it udcoom out i' yo too. Prayer-meetin! Yo yoong hypocrite! Gang yourways! Yo may sleep i' th' stable; it's good enough liggin for yothis neet. '

And before he had taken in her words she had slammed the door inhis face, and locked it. He made a feeble rush for it in vain. Hannah marched back into the kitchen, listening instinctively firstto him left outside, and then for any sound there might be fromupstairs. In a minute or two she heard uneven steps going away; butthere was no movement in the room overhead. Louie was sleepingheavily. As for Hannah, she sat down again with a fierce decisionof gesture, which seemed to vibrate through the kitchen and all itheld. Who could find fault with her? It would be a lesson to him. It was not a cold night, and there was straw in the stable--a dealbetter lying than such a boy deserved. As she thought of his'religious' turn she shrugged her shoulders with a bitter scorn. 

The night wore on in the high Kinder valley. The stormy wind andrain beat in great waves of sound and flood against the breast ofthe mountain; the Kinder stream and the Red Brook danced under theheavy drops. The grouse lay close and silent in the shelteringheather; even the owls in the lower woods made no sound. Still, thenight was not perfectly dark, for towards midnight a watery moonrose, and showed itself at intervals between the pelting showers. 

In the Dawsons' little cottage on Frimley Moor there were stilllights showing when that pale moon appeared. Margaret was watchinglate. She and another woman sat by the fire talking under theirbreaths. A kettle was beside her with a long spout, which sent thesteam far into the room, keeping the air of it moist and warm forthe poor bronchitic old man who lay close-curtained from thedraughts on the wooden bed in the corner. 

The kettle sang, the fire crackled, and the wind shook the windowsand doors. But suddenly, through the other sounds, Margaret wasaware of an intermittent knocking--a low, hesitating sound, as ofsome one outside afraid, and yet eager, to make himself heard. 

She started up, and her companion--a homely neighbour, one of thosepersons whose goodness had, perhaps, helped to shape poorMargaret's philosophy of life--looked round with a scaredexpression. 

'Whoiver can it be, this time o' neet?' said Margaret--and shelooked at the old clock--'why, it's close on middle-neet!'

She hesitated a moment, then she went to the door, and bent hermouth to the chink--

'Who are yo? What d' yo want?' she asked, in a distinct but lowvoice, so as not to disturb 'Lias. 

No answer for a minute. Then her ear caught some words fromoutside. With an exclamation she unlocked the door and threw itopen. 

'Davy! Davy!' she cried, almost forgetting her patient. 

The boy clung to the lintel without a word. 

'Coom your ways in!' she said peremptorily, catching him by thesleeve. 'We conno ha no draughts on th' owd man. '

And she drew him into the light, and shut the door. Then as theshaded candle and firelight fell on the tall lad, wavering now tothis side, now to that, as though unable to support himself, hisclothes dripping on the flags, his face deadly white, save for thesmears of blood upon it, the two women fell back in terror. 

'Will yo gie me shelter?' said the boy, hoarsely; 'I bin lying hoursi' th' wet. Aunt Hannah turned me out. '

Margaret came close to him and looked him all over. 

'What for did she turn yo out, Davy?'

'I wor late. I'd been fightin Jim Wigson, an she smelt me o' drink. '

And suddenly the lad sank down on a stool near, and laid his headin his hands, as though he could hold it up no longer. Margaret'sblanched old face melted all in a minute. 

'Howd 'un up quick!' she said to her companion, still in a whisper. 'He hanno got a dry thread on--and luke at that cut on hisyed--why, he'll be laid up for weeks, maybe, for this. Get hiscloos off, an we'll put him on my bed then. '

And between them they dragged him up, and Margaret began to stripoff his jacket. As they held him--David surrendering himselfpassively--the curtain of the bed was drawn back, and 'Lias, raising himself on an elbow, looked out into the room. As he caughtsight of the group of the boy and the two women, arrested in theirtask by the movement of the curtain, the old man's face expressed, first a weak and agitated bewilderment, and then in an instant itcleared. 

His dream wove the sight into itself, and 'Lias knew all about it. His thin long features, with the white hair hanging about them, took an indulgent amused look. 

'_Bony_--eh, Bony, is that _yo_, man? Eh, but yo're coldan pinched, loike! A gude glass o' English grog ud not come amissto yo. An your coat, an your boots--what is 't drippin? _Snaw?_ Yo make a man's backbane freeze t' see yo. An there's hot warkbehind yo, too. Moscow might ha warmed yo, I'm thinkin, an--'

But the weak husky voice gave way, and 'Lias fell back, stillholding the curtain, though, in his emaciated hand, and straininghis dim eyes on David. Margaret, with tears, ran to him, tried toquiet him and to shut out the light from him again. But he pushedher irritably aside. 

'No, Margaret, --doan't intrude. What d' yo know about it? Yo knownowt, Margaret. When did yo iver heer o' the Moscow campaign? Letme be, woan't yo?'

But perceiving that he would not be quieted, she turned him on hispillows, so that he could see the boy at his ease. 

'He's bin out i' th' wet, 'Lias dear, has Davy, ' she said; 'and it'snobbut a clashy night. We mun gie him summat hot, and a place tosleep in. '

But the old man did not listen to her. He lay looking at David, hispale blue eyes weirdly visible in his haggard face, muttering tohimself. He was still tramping in the snow with the French army. 

Then, suddenly, for the first time, he seemed troubled. He staredup at the pale miserable boy who stood looking at him withtrembling lips. His own face began to work painfully, his dreamstruggled with recognition. 

Margaret drew David quickly away. She hurried him into the furthercorner of the cottage, where he was out of sight of the bed. Thereshe quickly stripped him of his wet garments, as any mother mighthave done, found an old flannel shirt of 'Lias's for him, and, wrapping him close in a blanket, she made him lie down on her ownbed, he being now much too weak to realise what was done with him. Then she got an empty bottle, filled it from the kettle, and put itto his feet; and finally she brought a bowlful of warm water and abit of towel, and, sitting down by him, she washed the blood anddirt away from his face and hand, and smoothed down the tangledblack hair. She, too, noticed the smell of spirits, and shook herhead over it; but her motherliness grew with every act of service, and when she had made him warm and comfortable, and he was droppinginto the dead sleep of exhaustion, she drew her old hand tenderlyacross his brow. 

'He do feature yan o' my own lads so as he lies theer, ' she saidtremulously to her friend at the fire, as though explainingherself. 'When they'd coom home late fro wark, I'd use to hull 'emup so mony a time. Ay, I'd been woonderin what had coom to th' boy. I thowt he'd been goin wrang soomhow, or he'd ha coom aw theseweeks to see 'Lias an me. It's a poor sort o' family he's got. ThatHannah Grieve's a hard un, I'll uphowd yo. Theer's a deal o' herfault in 't, yo may mak sure. '

Then she went to give 'Lias some brandy--he lived on little elsenow. He dropped asleep again, and, coming back to the hearth, sheconsented to lie down before it while her friend watched. Herfailing frame was worn out with nursing and want of rest, and shewas soon asleep. 

When Davy awoke the room was full of a chill daylight. As he movedhe felt himself stiff all over. The sensation brought back memory, and the boy's whole being seemed to shrink together. He burrowedfirst under his coverings out of the light, then suddenly he sat upin bed, in the shadow of the little staircase--or ratherladder--which led to the upper story, and looked about him. 

The good woman who had shared Margaret's watch was gone back to herown home and children. Margaret had made up the fire, tidied theroom, and, at 'Lias's request, drawn up the blinds. She had justgiven him some beef-tea and brandy, sponged his face, and liftedhim on his pillows. There seemed to be a revival of life in the oldman, death was for the moment driven back; and Margaret hung overhim in an ecstasy, the two crooning together. David could see herthin bent figure--the sharpened delicacy of the emaciated face setin the rusty black net cap which was tied under the chin, and fellin soft frills on the still brown and silky hair. He saw herweaver's hand folded round 'Lias's, and he could hear 'Liasspeaking in a weak thread of a voice, but still sanely andrationally. It gave him a start to catch some of the words--he hadbeen so long accustomed to the visionary 'Lias. 

'Have yo rested, Margaret?'

'Ay, dear love, three hours an moor. Betsy James wor here; she sawyo wanted for nowt. She's a gude creetur, ain't she, 'Lias?'

'Ay, but noan so good as my Margaret, ' said the old man, looking ather wistfully. ' But yo'll wear yorsel down, Margaret; 'yo've had norest for neets. Yo're allus toilin' and moilin', an I'm no worthit, Margaret. '

The tears gushed to the wife's eyes. It was only with the nearnessof death that 'Lias seemed to have found out his debt to her. Toboth, her lifelong service had been the natural offering of thelower to the higher; she had not been used to gratitude, and shecould not bear it. 

'Dear heart! dear love!' David heard her say; and then there cameto his half-reluctant ear caresses such as a mother gives herchild. He laid his head on his knees, trying to shut them out. Hewished with a passionate and bitter regret that he had not been somany weeks without coming near these two people; and now 'Lias wasgoing fast, and after to-day he would see them both no more--forever?

Margaret heard him moving, and nodded back to him over hershoulder. 

'Yo've slept well, Davy, --better nor I thowt yo would. Your cloosare by yo--atwixt yo an t'stairs. '

And there he found them, dry and brushed. He dressed hastily andcame forward to the fire. 'Lias recognised him feebly, Margaretwatching anxiously to see whether his fancies would take him again. In this tension of death and parting his visions had become almostmore than she could bear. But 'Lias lay quiet. 

'Davy wor caught i' th' rain, and I gave him a bed, ' she explainedagain, and the old man nodded without a word. 

Then as she prepared him a bowl of oatmeal she stood by the firegiving the boy motherly advice. He must go back home, of course, and never mind Hannah; there would come a time when he would gethis chance like other people; and he mustn't drink, for, 'i' th'first place, drink wor a sad waste o' good wits, ' and David's were'better'n most;' and in the second, 'it wor a sin agen the Lord. '

David sat with his head drooped in his hand apparently listening. In reality, her gentle babble passed over him almost unheeded. Hewas aching in mind and body; his strong youth, indeed, had but justsaved him from complete physical collapse; for he had lain anindefinite time on the soaking moor, till misery and despair haddriven him to Margaret's door. But his moral equilibrium wasbeginning to return, in virtue of a certain resolution, the onething which now stood between him and the black gulf of the night. He ate his porridge and then he got up. 

'I mun goo, Margaret. '

He would fain have thanked her, but the words choked in his throat. 

'Ay, soa yo mun, Davy, ' said the little body briskly. 'If theer's anonpleasant thing to do it's best doon quickly--yo mun go back anddo your duty. Coom and see us when yo're passin again. An saygood-bye to 'Lias. He's that wick this mornin--ain't yo, 'Lias?'

And with a tender cheerfulness she ran across to 'Lias and told himDavy was going. 

'Good-bye, Davy, my lad, good-bye, ' murmured the old man, as hefelt the boy's strong fingers touching his. 'Have yo been readinowt, Davy, since we saw yo? It's a long time, Davy. '

'No, nowt of ony account, ' said David, looking away. 

'Ay, but yo mun keep it up. Coom when yo like; I've not mony books, but yo know yo can have 'em aw. I want noan o' them now, do I, Marg'ret? But I want for nowt--nowt. Dyin 's long, but it'svarra--varra peaceful. Margaret!'

And withdrawing his hand from Davy, 'Lias laid it in his wife's witha long, long sigh. David left them so. He stole out unperceived byeither of them. 

When he got outside he stood for a moment under the shelteringsycamores and laid his cheek against the door. The action containedall he could not say. 

Then he sped along towards the farm. The sun was rising through theautumn mists, striking on the gold of the chestnuts, the red of thecherry trees. There were spaces of intense blue among the rollingclouds, and between the storm past and the storm to come the wholemoorland world was lavishly, garishly bright. 

He paused at the top of the pasture-fields to look at the farm. Smoke was already rising from the chimney. Then Aunt Hannah was up, and he must mind himself. He crept on under walls, till he got tothe back of the farmyard. Then he slipped in, ran into the stable, and got an old coat of his left there the day before. There was acopy of a Methodist paper lying near it. He took it up and tore itacross with passion. But his rage was not so much with the paper. It was his own worthless, unstable, miserable self he would haverent if he could. The wreck of ideal hopes, the defacement of thatfair image of itself which every healthy youth bears about with it, could not have been more pitifully expressed. 

Then he looked round to see if there was anything else that hecould honestly take. Yes--an ash stick he had cut himself a week ortwo ago. Nothing else--and there was Tibby moving and beginning tobark in the cowhouse. 

He ran across the road, and from a safe shelter in the fields onthe farther side he again looked back to the farm. There wasLouie's room, the blind still down. He thought of his blow of thenight before--of his promises to her. Aye, she would fret over hisgoing--he knew that--in her own wild way. She would think he hadbeen a beast to her. So he had--so he had! There surged up in hismind inarticulate phrases of remorse, of self-excuse, as though hewere talking to her. 

Some day he would come back and claim her. But when? Hisbuoyant self-dependence was all gone. It had nothing to do withhis present departure. That came simply from the fact that it was_impossible_ for him to go on living in Kinder any longer--hedid not stop to analyse the whys and wherefores. 

But suddenly a nervous horror of seeing anyone he knew, now thatthe morning was advancing, startled him from his hiding-place. Heran up towards the Scout again, so as to make a long circuit roundthe Wigsons' farm. As he distinguished the walls of it a shiver ofpassion ran through the young body. Then he struck off straightacross the moors towards Glossop. 

One moment he stood on the top of Mardale Moor. On one side of himwas the Kinder valley, Needham Farm still showing among its trees;the white cataract of the Downfall cleaving the dark wall of theScout, and calling to the runaway in that voice of storm he knew sowell; the Mermaid's Pool gleaming like an eye in the moorland. Onthe other side were hollow after hollow, town beyond town, eachwith its cap of morning smoke. There was New Mills, there wasStockport, there in the far distance was Manchester. 

The boy stood a moment poised between the two worlds, his ash-stickin his hand, the old coat wound round his arm. Then at a bound hecleared a low stone wall beside him and ran down the Glossop road. 

Twelve hours later Reuben Grieve climbed the long hill to the farm. His wrinkled face was happier than it had been for months, and histhoughts were so pleasantly occupied that he entirely failed toperceive, for instance, the behaviour of an acquaintance, whostopped and started as he met him at the entrance of the Kinderlane, made as though he would have spoken, and, thinking better ofit, walked on. Reuben--the mendacious Reuben--had done very wellwith his summer stock--very well indeed. And part of his earningswas now safely housed in the hands of an old chapel friend, to whomhe had confided them under pledge of secrecy. But he took acurious, excited pleasure in the thought of the 'poor mouth' he wasgoing to make to Hannah. He was growing reckless in his passion forrestitution--always provided, however, that he was not called uponto brave his wife openly. A few more such irregular savings, and, if an opening turned up for David, he could pay the money and packoff the lad before Hannah could look round. He could never do itunder her opposition, but he thought he could do it and take theconsequences--he _thought_ he could. 

He opened his own gate. There on the house doorstep stood Hannah, whiter and grimmer than ever. 

'Reuben Grieve, ' she said quickly, 'your nevvy's run away. An if yodoan't coom and keep your good-for-nothin niece in her place, andmake udder foak keep a civil tongue i' their head to your wife, I'll leave your house this neet, as sure as I wor born a Martin!'

Reuben stumbled into the house. There was a wild rush downstairs, and Louie fell upon him, David's blow showing ghastly plain in herwhite quivering face. 

'Whar's Davy?' she said. 'Yo've got him!--he's hid soomwhere--yoknow whar he is! I'll not stay here if yo conno find him! It wor_her_ fault'--and she threw out a shaking hand towards heraunt--'she druv him out last neet--an Dawsons took him in--aniverybody's cryin shame on her! And if yo doan't mak her findhim--she knows where he is--I'll not stay in this hole!--I'll killher!--I'll burn th' house!--I'll--'

The child stopped--panting, choked--beside herself. 

Hannah made a threatening step, but at her gesture Reuben sprangup, and seizing her by both wrists he looked at her from a height, as a judge looks. Never had those dull eyes met her so before. 

'Woman!' he cried fiercely. 'Woman! what ha yo doon wi Sandy's son?'

BOOK II YOUTH

CHAPTER I

A tall youth carrying a parcel of books under his arm was hurryingalong Market Place, Manchester. Beside him were covered flowerstalls bordering the pavement, in front of him the domed mass ofthe Manchester Exchange, and on all sides he had to push his waythrough a crowd of talking, chaffering, hurrying humanity. Presently he stopped at the door of a restaurant bearing theidyllic and altogether remarkable name--there it was in giltletters over the door--of the 'Fruit and Flowers Parlour. ' On theside post of the door a bill of fare was posted, which the youngman looked up and down with careful eyes. It contained a strangemedley of items in all tongues--

 'Marrow pie _Haricots a la Lune de Miel Vol-au-Vent a la bonne Santo: _Tomato fritters Cheese 'Ticements _Salad saladorum_'

And at the bottom of the _menu_ was printed in bold redcharacters, 'No meat, no disease. _Ergo_, no meat, no sin. Fellow-citizens, leave your carnal foods, and try a more excellent way. I. E. Push the door and walk in. The Fruit and Flowers Parlour invites everybody and overcharges nobody. '

The youth did not trouble, however, to read the notice. He knew itand the 'Parlour' behind it by heart. But he moved away, ponderingthe _menu_ with a smile. 

In his amused abstraction--at the root of which lay the appetite ofeighteen--he suddenly ran into a passer-by, who stumbled against ashop window with an exclamation of pain. The youth's attention wasattracted and he stopped awkwardly. 

'People of your height, young man, should look before them, ' saidthe victim, rubbing what seemed to be a deformed leg, while hislips paled a little. 

'Mr. Ancrum, ' cried the other, amazed. 

'Davy!'

The two looked at each other. Then Mr. Ancrum gripped the lad'sarm. 

'Help me along, Davy. It's only a bruise. It'll go off. Where areyou going?'

'Up Piccadilly way with a parcel, ' said Davy, looking askance athis companion's nether man. 'Did I knock your bad leg, sir?'

'Oh no, nothing--never mind. Well now, Davy, this isqueer--decidedly queer. Four years!--and we run against each otherin Market Street at last. Tell me the truth, Davy--have you longago given me up as a man who could make promises to a lad indifficulties and forget 'em as soon as he was out of sight? Say itout, my boy. '

David flushed and looked down at his companion with someembarrassment. Their old relation of minister and pupil had left adeep mark behind it. Moreover, in the presence of that face of Mr. Ancrum's, a long, thin, slightly twisted face, with the stampsomehow of a tragic sincerity on the eyes and mouth, it wasdifficult to think as slightingly of his old friend as he had donefor a good while past, apparently with excellent reason. 

'I supposed there was something the matter, ' he blurted out atlast. 

'Well, never mind, Davy, ' said the other, smiling sadly. 'We can'ttalk here in this din. But now I've got you, I keep you. Where areyou?'

'I'm in Half Street, sir--Purcell's, the bookseller. '

'Don't know him. I never go into a shop. I have no money. Are youapprentice there?'

'Well, there was no binding. I'm assistant. I do a lot of businessone way and another, buying and selling both. '

'How long have you been in Manchester?'

'Four years, sir. '

The minister looked amazed. 

'And I have been here, off and on, for the last three. How have wemissed each other all that time? I made inquiries at Clough End, when--ah, well, no matter; but it was too late. You had decamped, no one could tell me anything. '

David walked on beside his companion, silent and awkward. Theexplanation seemed a lame one. Mr. Ancrum had left Clough End inMay, promising to look out for a place for the lad at once, and tolet him know. Six whole months elapsed between that promise andDavid's own departure. Yes, it was lame; but it was so long ago, and so many things had happened since, that it did not signify. Only he did not somehow feel much effusion in meeting his oldfriend and playfellow again. 

'Getting on, Davy?' said Ancrum presently, looking the lad up anddown. 

David made a movement of the shoulders which the minister noticed. It was both more free and more graceful than ordinary Englishgesture. It reawakened in Ancrum at once that impression ofsomething alien and unusual which both David and his sister hadoften produced in him while they were still children. 

'I don't know, ' said the boy slowly; and then, after a hesitationor two, fell silent. 

'Well, look here, ' said Ancrum, stopping short; 'this won't do fortalk, as I said before; but I must know all about you, and I musttell you what I can about myself. I lodge in Mortimer Road, youknow, up Fallowfield way. You can get there by tram in twentyminutes; when will you come and see me? Tonight?'

The lad thought a moment. 

'Would Wednesday night do, sir? I--I believe I'm going to the musicto-night. '

'What, to the "Elijah, " in the Free Trade Hall? Appoint me a placeto meet--we'll go together--and you shall come home to supper withme afterwards. '

David flushed and looked straight before him. 

'I promised to take two young ladies, ' he said, after a moment, abruptly. 

'Oh!' said Mr. Ancrum, laughing. 'I apologise. Well, Wednesdaynight, then. --Don't you forget, Davy--half-past seven? Done. _Fourteen_, Mortimer Road. Good-bye. '

And the minister turned and retraced his steps towards MarketPlace. He walked slowly, like one much preoccupied, and might haverun into fresh risks but for the instinctive perception of mostpassers-by that he was not a person to be hustled. Suddenly helaughed out--thinking of David and his 'young ladies, ' andcomparing the lad's admission with his former attitude towards'gells. ' Well, time had but wrought its natural work. Whata brilliant noticeable creature altogether--how unlike theordinary run of north-country lads! But that he had been from thebeginning--the strain of some nimbler blood had always shownitself. 

Meanwhile, David made his way up Piccadilly--did some humouristdivert himself, in days gone by, with dropping a shower of Londonnames on Manchester streets?--and deposited his parcel. Then thegreat clock of the Exchange struck twelve, and the Cathedralfollowed close upon it, the sounds swaying and vibrating above thecrowds hurrying through Market Street. It was a damp October day. Above, the sky was hidden by a dark canopy of cloud and smoke; theCathedral on its hill rose iron-black above the black streets andriver; black mud encrusted all the streets, and bespattered thosethat walked in them. Nothing more dreary than the smoke-grimedbuildings on either hand, than the hideous railway station acrossthe bridge, or the mud-sprinkled hoardings covered with flaringadvertisements, which led up to the bridge, could be well imagined. Manchester was at its darkest and grimmest. 

But as David Grieve walked back along Market Street his heartdanced within him. Neither mud nor darkness, neither the squalor ofthe streets, nor the penetrating damp of the air, affected him atall. The crowd, the rush of life about him, the gas in the shops, the wares on which it shone, the endless faces passing him, thesense of hurry, of business, of quick living--he saw and feltnothing else; and to these his youth was all atune. 

Arrived in Market Place again he made his way with alacrity to the'Parlour. ' For it was dinner time; he had a free half-hour, andnine times out of ten he spent it at the 'Parlour. '

He walked in, put his hat on its accustomed peg, took his seat at atable near the door, and looked round for some one. The lowwidespreading room was well filled, mostly with clerks and shopmen;the gas was lit because of the darkness outside, and showed off thegay panels on the walls filled with fruit and flower subjects, forwhich Adrian O'Connor Lomax, commonly called 'Daddy, ' the owner ofthe restaurant, had given a commission to some students at theMechanics' Institute, and whereof he was inordinately proud. At theend of the room near the counter was a table occupied by about halfa dozen young men, all laughing and talking noisily, and besidethem shouting, gesticulating, making dashes, now for one, now foranother--was a figure, which David at once set himself to watch, his chin balanced on his hand, his eyes dancing. It was the thintall figure of an oldish man in a long frock-coat, which opened infront over a gaily flowered silk waistcoat. On the bald crown ofhis head he wore a black skull cap, below which certain grotesqueand scanty tails of fair hair, carefully brushed, fell to hisshoulders. His face was long and sharply pointed, and the surfaceof it bronzed and wrinkled by long exposure, out of all likeness tohuman skin. The eyes were weirdly prominent and blue; the gestureshad the deliberate extravagance of an actor; and the whole manrecalled a wizard of pantomime. 

David had hardly time to amuse himself with the 'chaffing' ofDaddy, which was going on, and which went on habitually at theParlour from morning till night, when Daddy perceived a new-comer. 

He turned round sharp upon his heels, surveyed the room with thefrown of a general. 

'Ah!' he said with a theatrical air, as he made out the lad at thefurther table. 'Gentlemen, I let you off for the present, ' andwaving his hand to them with an indulgent self-importance, whichprovoked a roar of laughter, he turned and walked down therestaurant, with a quick swaying gait, to where David sat. 

David made room for him in a smiling silence. Lomax sat down, andthe two looked at each other. 

'Davy, ' said Daddy severely, 'why weren't you here yesterday?'

'When did you begin opening on Sundays, Daddy?' said the youth, attacking a portion of marrow pie, which had just been laid beforehim, his gay curious eyes still wandering over Daddy's costume, which was to-day completed by a large dahlia in the buttonhole, asgrotesque as the rest. 

'Ah bedad, but I'm losing my memory entirely;--and you know it, youvarmint. Well then, it was Saturday you weren't here. '

'You're about right there. I was let off early, and got a walk outRamsbottom way with a fellow. I hadn't stretched my legs for twomonths, and--I'll confess to you, Daddy--that when we got down fromthe moor, I was--overtaken--as the pious people say--by a muttonchop. '

The lad looked up at him laughing. Daddy surveyed him with chagrin. 

'I knew you were a worthless lukewarm sort of a creature. Flesh-eating's as bad as drink for them that have got it in 'em. It'll come out. Well, go your ways! _You'll_ never be PrimeMinister. '

'Don't distress yourself, Daddy. As long as marrow pies are good, Ishall eat 'em--you may count on that. What's that cheese affairdown there?' and he pointed towards the last item but one in thebill of fare. Instead of answering, the old man turned on his seat, and called to one of the waitresses near. In a second David had a'Cheese 'Ticement' before him, at which he peered curiously. Daddywatched him, not without some signs of nervousness. 

'Daddy, ' said David, calmly looking up, 'when I last saw thisarticle it was called "Welsh rabbit. "'

'Davy, you've no soul for fine distinctions, ' said the otherhastily. 'Change the subject. How have my _dear_ brother-in-lawand you been hitting it off lately?'

David went on with his ''Ticement, ' the corners of his mouthtwitching, for a minute or so, then he raised his head and slowlyshook it, looking Daddy in the face. 

'We shall bear up when we say good-bye, Daddy, and I don't thinkthat crisis is far off. It would have come long ago, only I dohappen to know a provoking deal more about books than any assistanthe ever had before. Last week I picked him up a copy of "Bells andPomegranates" for one and nine, and he sold it next day for twopound sixteen. There's business for you, Daddy. That put off ourbreach at least a fortnight, but unless I discover a first folio ofShakespeare for sixpence between now and then, I don't see what'sto postpone the agony after that--and if I did I should probablyspeculate in it myself. No, Daddy, it's coming to the point, as thetiger said when he reached the last joint of the cow's tail. Andit's your fault. '

'My fault, Davy, ' said Lomax, half tremulous, half delighted, drawing a chair close up to the table that he might lose nothing ofthe youth's confidences. 'What d'ye mean by that, ye spalpeen?'

'Well, wasn't it you took me to the Hall of Science, Daddy, andcouldn't keep a quiet tongue in your head about it afterwards?Wasn't it you lent me the "Secularist, " which got me into the worstrumpus of the season? Oh, Daddy, you're a bad un!'

And the handsome lad leant back in his chair, stretching his longlegs and studying Daddy with twinkling eyes. As for Lomax, hereceived the onslaught with a curious mixture of expressions, inwhich a certain malicious pleasure, crossed by an uneasy sense ofresponsibility, was the most prominent. He sat drumming on thetable, his straggling beard falling forward on to his chest, hismouth pursing itself up. At last he threw back his head withenergy. 

'I'll not excuse myself, Davy; you're well out of it. You'll be agreat man yet--always provided you can manage yourself in thematter of flesh meat. It was to come one way or the other--youcouldn't put up much longer with such a puke-stocking as myprecious brother-in-law. (That's one of the great points ofShakespeare, Davy, my lad--perhaps you haven't noticed it--you getsuch a ruck of bad names out of him for the asking! Puke-stockingis good--real good. If it wasn't made for a sanctimonioushypocrite of a Baptist like Purcell it ought to have been. )And "Spanish-pouch" too! Oh, I love "Spanish-pouch"! When I'vecalled a man "Spanish-pouch", I'm the better for it, Davy--thebile's relieved. '

'Thank you, Daddy; I'll remember the receipt. I say, were you everin Purcell's shop?'

'Purcell's shop? Why, of course I was, you varmint! Wasn't it thereI met my Isabella, his sister? Ah, the poor thing! He led her alife; and when I was his assistant I took sides with her--that wasthe beginning of it all. At first we hadn't got on so badly--I hada pious fit on myself in those days--but one day at tea, I had beenmaking free--taking Isabella's part. There had been a neighbourthere, and the laugh had been against him. Well, after tea, wemarched back to the shop, and says he to me, as black as thunder, "I'm quite willing, Lomax, to be your Christian brother in here:when we're in society I'd have you remember it's different. Youshould know your place. "

'"Oh, should I?" says I. (Isabella had been squeezing my hand underthe table and I didn't care what I said. ) "Well, you'd better findsome one as will, and be d--d to your Christian brotherhood. " AndI took my cap up and marched out, leaving him struck a pillar ofsalt with surprise, and that mad!--for we were in the middle ofissuing the New Year's catalogue, and he'd left most of it to me. And three weeks after--'

Daddy rose quivering with excitement, put his thumbs into hiswaistcoat pocket, and bent over the back of his chair towardsDavid. As he stood there, on tip-toe, the flaps of the long coatfalling back from him like wings, his skull-cap slightly awry, twored spots on either wrinkled cheek, and every feature of the sharpbrown face alive with the joy of his long-past vengeance, he waslike some strange perching bird. 

'--Three weeks after, Davy, I married my Isabella under hispuritanical nose, at the chapel across the way; and the bit ofspite in it--bedad!--it was like mustard to beef. (Pish! what am Iabout!) And I set up shop almost next door to the chapel, and tookthe trade out of his mouth, and enjoyed myself finely for sixmonths. At the end of that time he gave out that the neighbourhoodwas too "low" for him, and he moved up town. And though I've beenhalf over the world since, I've never ceased to keep an eye on him. I've had a finger in more pies of his than he thinks for!'

And Daddy drew himself up, pressing his hands against his sides, his long frame swelling out, as it seemed, with sudden passion. David watched him with a look half sympathetic, half satirical. 

'I don't see that he did you much harm, Daddy. '

'Harm!' said the little man, irascibly. 'Harm! I must say you'reuncommon slow at gripping a situation, Davy. I'd my wife's score tosettle, too, I tell you, as well as my own. He'd sat on his pooreasy-going sister till she hadn't a feature left. I knew he had. He's made up of all the mean vices--and at the same time, if youwere to hear him at a prayer meeting, you'd think that since Enochwent up to heaven the wrong way, the world didn't happen to havebeen blessed with another saint to match Tom Purcell. ' And, stirredby his own eloquence, Daddy looked down frowning on the youthbefore him. 

'What made you give up the book-trade, Daddy?' asked David, with asmile. 

It was like the pricking of a bladder. Daddy collapsed in a moment. Sitting down again, he began to arrange his coat elaborately overhis knees, as though to gain time. 

'David, you're an inquisitive varmint, ' he said at last, looking upaskance at his companion. ' Some one's been telling you tales, by the look of you. Look here--if Tom Purcell's a blatheringhypocrite, that is not the same thing precisely as saying thatAdrian O'Connor Lomax is a perfect specimen of the domesticvirtues. Never you mind, my boy, what made me give up bookselling. I've chucked so many things overboard since, that it's hardly worthinquiring. Try any trade you like and Daddy'll be able to give yousome advice in it--that's the only thing that concerns you. Wellnow, tell me--' and he turned round and put his elbows on thetable, leaning over to David--'When are you coming away, and whatare your prospects?'

'I told you about a fortnight would see it out, Daddy. And there'sa little shop in--But it's no good, Daddy. You can't keep secrets. '

The old man turned purple, drew himself up, and looked fiercely atDavid from behind his spectacles. But in a second his mood changedand he stretched his hand slowly out across the table. 

'On the honour of a Lomax, ' he said solemnly. 

There was a real dignity about the absurd action which meltedDavid. He shook the hand and repeated him. Leaning over hewhispered some information in Daddy's ear, Daddy beamed. And in themidst of the superfluity of nods and winks that followed Davidcalled for his bill. 

The action recalled Daddy to his own affairs, and he looked oncomplacently while David paid. 

''Pon my word, Davy, I can hardly yet believe in my own genius. Where else, my boy, in this cotton-spinning hole, would you find adinner like that for sixpence? Am I a benefactor to the species, sir, or am I not?'

'Looks like it, Daddy, by the help of Miss Dora. '

'Aye, aye, ' said the old man testily, --'I'll not deny that Dora'suseful to the business. But the _inspiration_, Davy, 's allmine. You want genius, my boy, to make a tomfool of yourself likethis, ' and he looked himself proudly up and down. 'Twenty customersa week come here for nothing in the world but to see what new rigsDaddy may be up to. The invention--the happy ideas, man, I throwinto one day of this place would stock twenty ordinary businesses. '

'All the same, Daddy, I've tasted Welsh rabbit before, ' said Daviddrily, putting on his hat. 

'I scorn your remark, sir. It argues a poorly furnished mind. Showme anything new in this used-up world, eh? but for the name and thedishing up--Well, good-bye, Davy, and good luck to you!'

David made his way across Hanging Ditch to a little row of housesbearing the baldly appropriate name of Half Street. It ran alongthe eastern side of the Cathedral close. First came the houses, small, irregular, with old beams and projections here and there, then a paved footway, then the railings round the close. In fullview of the windows of the street rose the sixteenth-centurychurch which plays as best it can the part of Cathedral toManchester. Round it stretched a black and desolate space pavedwith tombstones. Not a blade of grass broke the melancholy of thosebegrimed and time-worn slabs. The rain lay among them in pools, squalid buildings overlooked them, and the church, with itsmanifest inadequacy to a fine site and a great city, did but littletowards overcoming the mean and harsh impression made--on such aday especially--by its surroundings. 

David opened the door of a shop about halfway up the row. A bellrang sharply, and as he shut the outer door behind him, another atthe back of the shop opened hastily, and a young girl came in. 

'Mr. Grieve, father's gone out to Eccles to see some books agentleman wants him to buy. If Mr. Stephens comes, you're to tellhim father's found him two or three more out of the list he sent. You know where all his books are put together, if he wants to seethem, father says. '

'Yes, thank you, Miss Purcell, I do. No other message?'

'No. ' The speaker lingered. 'What time do we start for the musicto-night? But you'll be down to tea?'

'Certainly, if you and Miss Dora don't want it to yourselves. ' Thespeaker smiled. He was leaning on the counter, while the girl stoodbehind it. 

'Oh dear, no!' said Miss Purcell with a half-pettish gesture. 'Idon't know what to talk to Dora about now. She thinks of nothingbut St. Damian's and her work. It's worse than father. And, ofcourse, I know she hasn't much opinion of _me_. Indeed, she'salways telling me so--well, not exactly--but she lets me guess fastenough. '

The speaker put up two small hands to straighten some of theelaborate curls and twists with which her pretty head was crowned. There was a little consciousness in the action. The thought of hercousin had evidently brought with it the thought of some of thosethings of which the stern Dora disapproved. 

David looked at the brown hair and the slim fingers as he was meantto look at them. Yet in his smiling good humour there was not atrace of bashfulness or diffidence. He was perfectly at his ease, with something of a proud self-reliant consciousness in everymovement; nothing in his manner could have reminded a spectator ofthe traditional apprentice making timid love to his master'sdaughter. 

'I've seen you stand up to her though, ' he said laughing. 'It's likeall pious people. Doesn't it strike you as odd that they shouldnever be content with being pious for themselves?'

He looked at her with bright sarcastic eyes. 

'Oh, I know what you mean!' she said with an instant change oftone; 'I didn't mean anything of the sort. I think it's shocking ofyou to go to that place on Sundays--so there, Mr. Grieve. '

She threw herself back defiantly against the books which walled theshop, her arms folded before her. The attitude showed the longthroat, the rounded bust, and the slender waist compressed withsome evident rigour into a close-fitting brown dress. That MissPurcell thought a great deal of the fashion of her hair, the styleof her bodices, and the size of her waist was clear; that she wasconscious of thinking about them to good purpose was also plain. But on the whole the impression of artificiality, of somethingover-studied and over-done which the first sight of her generallyawakened, was soon, as a rule, lost in another more attractive--inone of light, tripping youth, perfectly satisfied with itself andwith the world. 

'I don't think you know much about the place, ' he said quietly, still smiling. 

She flushed, her foolish little sense of natural superiority to'the assistant' outraged again, as it had been outraged already ahundred times since she and David Grieve had met. 

'I know quite as much as anybody need know--any respectableperson--' she maintained angrily. 'It's a low, disgracefulplace--and they talk wicked nonsense. Everyone says so. It doesn'tmatter a bit where Uncle Lomax goes--he's mad--but it is a shame heshould lead other people astray. '

She was much pleased with her own harangue, and stood therefrowning on him, her sharp little chin in the air, one foot beatingthe ground. 

'Well, yes, really, ' said David in a reflective tone; 'one wouldthink Miss Dora had her hands full at home, without--'

He looked up, significantly, smiling. Lucy Purcell was enragedwith him--with his hypocritical sympathy as to her uncle'smisdoings--his avoidance of his own crime. 

'It's not uncle at all, it's you!' she cried, with more logic thanappeared. 'I tell you, Mr. Grieve, father won't stand it. '

The young man drew himself up from the counter. 

'No, ' he said with great equanimity, 'I suppose not. '

And taking up a parcel of books from the counter he turned away. Lucy, flurried and pouting, called after him. 

'Mr. Grieve!'

'Yes. '

'I--I didn't mean it. I _hope_ you won't go. I know father'shard. He's hard enough with me. '

And she raised her hands to her flushed face. David was terriblyafraid she was going to cry. Several times since the orphan girl ofseventeen had arrived from school three months before to take herplace in her father's house, had she been on the point of confidingher domestic woes to David Grieve. But though under the terms ofhis agreement with her father, which included one meal in the backparlour, the assistant and she were often thrown together, he hadtill now instinctively held her aloof. His extraordinary good looksand masterful energetic ways had made an impression on herschoolgirl mind from the beginning. But for him she had nomagnetism whatever. The little self-conceited creature knew it, orpartially knew it, and smarted under it. 

Now, he was just beginning an awkward sentence, when there was asound at the outer door. With another look at him, half shy, halfappealing, Lucy fled. Conscious of a distinct feeling of relief, David went to attend to the customer. 

CHAPTER II

The customer was soon content and went out again into the rain. David mounted a winding iron stair which connected the downstairsshop with an upper room in which a large proportion of the bookswere stored. It was a long, low, rambling place made by throwingtogether all the little bits of rooms on the first floor of the oldhouse. One corner of it had a special attraction for David. It wasthe corner where, ranged partly on the floor, partly on the shelveswhich ran under the windows, lay the collection of books thatPurcell had been making for his customer, Mr. Stephens. 

Out of that collection Purcell's assistant had extracted a veryvaried entertainment. In the first place it had amused him to watchthe laborious pains and anxiety with which his pious employer hadgathered together the very sceptical works of which Mr. Stephenswas in want, showing a knowledge of contents, and editions, andout-of-the-way profanities, under the stimulus of a payingcustomer, which drew many a sudden laugh from David when he wasleft to think of it in private. 

In the next place the books themselves had been a perpetual feastto him for weeks, enjoyed all the more keenly because of thesecrecy in which it had to be devoured. The little gatheringrepresented with fair completeness the chief books of the French'philosophers, ' both in the original French, and in those Englishtranslations of which so plentiful a crop made its appearanceduring the fifty years before and after 1800. There, for instance, lay the seventy volumes of Voltaire. Close by was an imperfect copyof the Encyclopaedia, which Mr. Stephens was getting cheap; on theother side a motley gathering of Diderot and Rousseau; whileHolbach's 'System of Nature, ' and Helvetius 'On the Mind, ' heldtheir rightful place among the rest. 

Through these books, then, which had now been on the premises forsome time--Mr. Stephens being a person of uncertain domicile, andunable as yet to find them a home--David had been freely ranging. Whenever Purcell was out of the way and customers were slack, heinvariably found his way to this spot in the upper room. There, with his elbows on the top of the bookcase which ran under thewindow, and a book in front of him--or generally two, the originalFrench and a translation--he had read Voltaire's tales, a greatdeal of the Encyclopaedia, a certain amount of Diderot, for whom hecherished a passionate admiration, and a much smaller smattering ofRousseau. At the present moment he was grappling with the'Dictionnaire Philosophique, ' and the 'Systeme de la Nature, 'fortified in both cases by English versions. 

The gloom of the afternoon deepened, and the increasing rain hadthinned the streets so much that during a couple of hours David hadbut three summonses from below to attend to. For the rest of thetime he was buried in the second volume of the 'DictionnairePhilosophique, ' now skipping freely, now chewing and digesting, hiseyes fixed vacantly on the darkening church outside. Above all, thearticle on _Contradictions_ had absorbed and delighted him. There are few tones in themselves so fascinating to the nascentliterary sense as this mock humility tone of Voltaire's. And inDavid's case all that passionate sense of a broken bubble and ascattered dream, which had haunted him so long after he leftKinder, had entered into and helped toward his infatuation withhis new masters. They brought him an indescribable sense offreedom--omniscience almost. 

For instance:--

'We must carefully distinguish in all writings, and especially inthe sacred books, between real and apparent contradictions. Venturous critics have supposed a contradiction existed in thatpassage of Scripture which narrates how Moses changed all thewaters of Egypt into blood, and how immediately afterwards themagicians of Pharaoh did the same thing, the book of Exodusallowing no interval at all between the miracle of Moses and themagical operation of the enchanters. Certainly it seems at firstsight impossible that these magicians should change into blood whatwas already blood; but this difficulty may be avoided by supposingthat Moses had allowed the waters to reassume their proper nature, in order to give time to Pharaoh to recover himself. Thissupposition is all the more plausible, seeing that the text, if itdoes not favour it expressly, is not opposed to it. 

'The same sceptics ask how when all the horses had been killed bythe hail in the sixth plague Pharaoh could pursue the Jews withcavalry. But this contradiction is not even apparent, because thehail, which killed all the horses in the fields, could not fallupon those which were in the stables. '

And so on through a long series of paragraphs, leading at last tomatters specially dear to the wit of Voltaire, the contradictionsbetween St. Luke and St. Matthew--in the story of the census ofQuirinus, of the Magi, of the massacre of the Innocents, and whatnot--and culminating in this innocent conclusion:--

'After all it is enough that God should have deigned to reveal to usthe principal mysteries of the faith, and that He should haveinstituted a Church in the course of time to explain them. Allthese contradictions, so often and so bitterly brought up againstthe Gospels, are amply noticed by the wisest commentators; far fromharming each other, one explains another; they lend each other amutual support, both in the concordance and in the harmony of thefour Gospels. '

David threw back his head with a laugh which came from the verydepths of him. Then, suddenly, he was conscious of the churchstanding sombrely without, spectator as it seemed of his thoughtsand of his mirth. Instantly his youth met the challenge by a riseof passionate scorn! What! a hundred years since Voltaire, andmankind still went on believing in all these follies and fables, inthe ten plagues, in Balaam's ass, in the walls of Jericho, inmiraculous births, and Magi, and prophetic stars!--in everythingthat the mockery of the eighteenth century had slain a thousandtimes over. Ah, well!--Voltaire knew as well as anybody thatsuperstition is perennial, insatiable--a disease and weakness ofthe human mind which seems to be inherent and ineradicable. Andthere rose in the boy's memory lines he had opened upon thatmorning in a small Elizabethan folio he had been cataloguing withmuch pains as a rarity--lines which had stuck in his mind--

 Vast superstition! glorious style of weakness, Sprung from the deep disquiet of man's passion To dissolution and despair of Nature!--

He flung them out at the dark mass of building opposite, as thoughhe were his namesake flinging at Goliath. Only a few months beforethat great church had changed masters--had passed from the hands ofan aristocratic and inaccessible bishop of the old school intothose of a man rich in all modern ideas and capacities, full ofenergy and enthusiasm, a scholar and administrator both. And_he_ believed all those absurdities, David wanted to know?Impossible! No honest man could, thought the lad defiantly, withthe rising colour of crude and vehement feeling, when his attentionhad been once challenged, and he had developed mind enough to knowwhat the challenge meant. 

Except, perhaps, Uncle Reuben and Dora Lomax, and people like that. He stood thinking and staring out of window, one idea leading toanother. The thought of Reuben brought with it a certain softeningof mood--the softening of memory and old association. Yes, he wouldlike to see Uncle Reuben again--explain to him, perhaps, that oldstory--so old, so distant!--of his running away. Well, he_would_ see him again, as soon as he got a place of his own, which couldn't be long now, whether Purcell gave him the sack ornot. Instinctively, he felt for that inner pocket, which held hispurse and his savings-bank book. Yes, he was near freedom now, whatever happened!

Then it occurred to him that it was unlucky he should have stumbledacross Mr. Ancrum just at this particular juncture. The minister, of course, had friends at Clough End still. And he, David, didn'twant Louie down upon him just yet--not just yet--for a month ortwo. 

Then the smile which had begun to play about the mouth suddenlybroadened into a merry triumph. When Louie knew all about him andhis contrivances these last four years, wouldn't she be mad! If shewere to appear at this moment, he could tell her that she wore apink dress at the 'wake' last week, --when she was at chapel last, --what young men were supposed to be courting her since the summer, and a number of other interesting particulars--

'Mr. Grieve! Tea!'

His face changed. Reluctantly shutting his book and putting it intoits place, he took his way to the staircase. 

As David opened the swing door leading to the Purcells' parlour atthe back of the shop he heard Miss Purcell saying in a mournfulvoice, 'It's no good, Dora; not a haporth of good. Father won't letme. I might as well have gone to prison as come home. '

The assistant emerged into the bright gaslight of the little roomas she spoke. There was another girl sitting beside Lucy, who gotup with a shy manner and shook hands with him. 

'Will you take your tea, Mr. Grieve?' said Lucy, with a pettishsigh, handing it to him, and then throwing herself vehemently backin her hostess's chair, behind the tea tray. She let her hands hangover the arms of it--the picture of discontent. The gaslight showedher the possessor of bright brown eyes, under fine brows slenderlybut clearly marked, of a pink and white skin slightly freckled, ofa small nose quite passable, but no ways remarkable, of a daintylittle chin, and a thin-lipped mouth, slightly raised at onecorner, and opening readily over some irregular but very whiteteeth. Except for the eyes and eyebrows the features could claimnothing much in the way of beauty. Yet at this moment ofseventeen--thanks to her clear colours, her small thinness, and thebeautiful hair so richly piled about her delicate head--LucyPurcell was undeniably a pretty girl, and since her arrival inManchester she had been much more blissfully certain of the factthan she had ever succeeded in being while she was still under therepressive roof of Miss Pym's boarding-school for young ladies, Pestalozzi House, Blackburn. 

David sat down, perceiving that something had gone very wrong, butnot caring to inquire into it. His whole interest in the Purcellhousehold was, in fact, dying out. He would not be concerned withit much longer. 

So that, instead of investigating Miss Purcell's griefs, he askedher cousin whether it had not come on to rain. The girl oppositereplied in a quiet, musical voice. She was plainly dressed in ablack hat and jacket; but the hat had a little bunch of cowslips tolight it up, and the jacket was of an ordinary fashionable cut. There was nothing particularly noticeable about the face at firstsight, except its soft fairness and the gentle steadfastness of theeyes. The movements were timid, the speech often hesitating. Yetthe impression which, on a first meeting, this timidity was apt toleave on a spectator was very seldom a lasting one. David's idea ofMiss Lomax, for instance, had radically changed during the threemonths since he had made acquaintance with her. 

Rain, it appeared, _had_ begun, and there must be umbrellasand waterproofs for the evening's excursion. As the two others weresettling at what time David Grieve and Lucy should call for Dora inMarket Place, Lucy woke up from a dream, and broke in upon them. 

'And, Dora, you know, I _could_ have worn that dress with thenarrow ribbons I showed you last week. It's all there--upstairs--inthe cupboard--not a crease in it!'

Dora could not help laughing, and the laugh sent a charming lightinto her grey, veiled eyes. The tone was so inexpressibly doleful, the manner so childish. David smiled too, and his eyes and Dora'smet in a sort of friendly understanding--the first time, perhaps, they had so met. Then they both turned themselves to the task ofconsolation. The assistant inquired what was the matter. 

'I wanted her to go with me to the dance at the Mechanics'Institute next week, ' said Dora. 'Mrs. Alderman Head would havetaken us both. It's very nice and respectable. I didn't think unclewould mind. But Lucy's sure he will. '

'Sure! Of course I'm sure, ' said Lucy sharply. 'I've heard him talkabout dancing in a way to make anybody sick. If he only knew allthe dancing we had at Pestalozzi House!'

'Does he think all dancing wrong?' inquired David. 

'Yes--unless it's David dancing before the Ark, or some suchnonsense, ' replied Lucy, with the same petulant gloom. 

David laughed out. Then he fell into a brown study, one handplaying with his tea-cup, an irrepressable smile still curvingabout his mouth. Dora, observing him across the table, could notbut remember other assistants of Uncle Purcell whom she has seensitting in that same place, and the airs which Miss Purcell in herrare holidays had given herself towards those earlier young men. And now, this young man, whenever Purcell himself was out of theway, was master of the place. Anyone could see that, so long as hewas there, Lucy was sensitively conscious of him in all that shesaid or did. 

She did not long endure his half-mocking silence now. 

'You see, Dora, ' she began again, with an angry glance towardshim, 'father's worse than ever just now. He's been so aggravated. '

'Yes, ' said Dora timidly. She perfectly understood what was meant, but she shrank from pursuing the subject. But David looked up. 

'I should be very sorry, I'm sure, Miss Purcell, to get in your wayat all, or cause you any unpleasantness, if that's what you mean. Idon't think you'll be annoyed with me long. '

He spoke with a boyish exaggerated dignity. It became him, however, for his fine and subtle physique somehow supported and endorsed it. 

Both girls started. Lucy looked suddenly as miserable as she hadbefore looked angry. But in her confused state of feeling sherenewed her attack. 

'I don't understand anything about it, ' she said, with plaintiveincoherence. 'Only I can't _think_ why people should always bemaking disturbances. Dora! Doesn't _everybody_ you know thinkit wicked to go to the Hall of Science?'

She drew herself up peremptorily. David resumed the half smiling, half meditative attitude which had provoked her before. Dora lookedfrom one to the other, a pure bright color rising in her cheek. 

'I don't know anything about that, ' she said in a low voice. 'Idon't think that would matter, Lucy. But, oh, I do wish fatherwouldn't go--and Mr. Grieve wouldn't go. '

Her voice and hand shook. Lucy looked triumphantly at David. Instinctively she realised that, especially of late, David had cometo feel more respectfully towards Dora than she had ever succeededin making him feel towards herself. In the beginning of theiracquaintance he had often launched into argument with Dora aboutreligious matters, especially about the Ritualistic practices inwhich she delighted. The lad, overflowing with his Voltaire andd'Holbach, had not been able to forbear, and had apparently taken amischievous pleasure in shocking a bigot--as he had originallyconceived Lucy Purcell's cousin to be. The discussion, indeed, hadnot gone very far. The girl's horror and his own sense of hisposition and its difficulties had checked them in the germ. Moreover, as has been said, his conception of Dora had graduallychanged on further acquaintance. As for her, she had now for a longtime avoided arguing with him, which made her outburst on thepresent occasion the more noticeable. 

He looked up quickly. 

'Miss Lomax, how do you suppose one makes up one's mind--eitherabout religion or anything else? Isn't it by hearing both sides?'

'Oh, no--no!' she said, shrinking. 'Religion isn't like anythingelse. It's by--by growing up into it--by thinking about it--anddoing what the Church tells you. You come to _know_ it's true. '

That the Magi and Balaam's ass are true! What folly! But somehoweven his youthful ardour could not say it, so full of pure andtremulous pain was the gaze fixed upon him. And, indeed, he had notime for any answer, for she had just spoken when the bell of theouter door sounded, and a step came rapidly through the shop. 

'Father!' said Lucy, lifting the lid of the teapot in a greathurry. 'Oh, I wonder if the tea's good enough. '

She was stirring it anxiously with a spoon, when Purcell entered, atall heavily built man, with black hair, a look of command, and astep which shook the little back room as he descended into it. Hetouched Dora's hand with a pompous politeness, and then subsidedinto his chair opposite Lucy, complaining about the weather, anddemanding tea, which his daughter gave him with a timid haste, looking to see whether he were satisfied as he raised the firstspoonful to his lips. 

'Anything worth buying?' said David to his employer. He was leaningback in his chair, with his arm round the back of another. AgainDora was reminded by contrast of some of the nervous lads she hadseen in that room before, scarcely daring to eat their tea underPurcell's eye, flying to cut him bread, or pass him the sugar. 

'No, ' said Purcell curtly. 

'And a great price, I suppose?'

Purcell looked up. Apparently the ease of the young man's tone andattitude put the finishing stroke to an inward process already faradvanced. 

'The price, I conceive, is _my_ business, ' he said, in hismost overbearing manner. 'When you have to pay, it will be yours. '

David flushed, without, however, changing his position, and Lucymade a sudden commotion among the teacups. 

'Father, ' she said, with a hurried agitation which hardly allowedher to pick up the cup she had thrown over, 'Dora and I want tospeak to you. You mustn't talk business at tea. Oh, I _know_you won't let me go; but I _should_ like it, and Dora's cometo ask. I shouldn't want a new dress, and it will be _most_respectable, everyone says; and I _did_ learn dancing atschool, though you didn't know it. Miss Georgina said it was stuffand nonsense, and I must--'

'What _is_ she talking about?' said Purcell to Dora, with anangry glance at Lucy. 

'I want to take her to a dance, ' said Dora quietly, 'if you wouldlet her come. There's one at the Mechanics' Institute next week, given by the Unicorn benefit society. Mrs. Alderman Head said Imight go with her, and Lucy too if you'll let her come. I've got aticket. '

'I'm much obliged to Mrs. Alderman Head, ' said Purcellsarcastically. 'Lucy knows very well what I think of an unchristianand immodest amusement. Other people must decide according to theirconscience, _I_ judge nobody. '

At this point David got up, and disappeared into the shop. 

'Oh yes, you do judge, uncle, ' cried Dora, roused at last, andcolouring. 'You're always judging. You call everything unchristianyou don't like, whether its dancing, or--or--early celebration, ororgan music, or altar-cloths. But you can't be always right--nobodycan. '

Purcell surveyed her with a grim composure. 

'If you suppose I make any pretence to be infallible, you are quitemistaken, ' he said, with slow solemnity--no one in disclaimingPapistry could have been more the Pope--'I leave that to yourpriests at St. Damian's, Dora. But there _is_ an infallibleguide, both for you and for me, and that's the Holy Scriptures. Ifyou can show me any place where the _Bible_ approves ofpromiscuous dancing between young Christian men and women, or of awoman exposing her person for admiration's sake, or of such vainand idle talking as is produced by these entertainments, I will letLucy go. But you can't. "Whose adorning let it not be--"'

And he quoted the Petrine admonition with a harsh triumphantemphasis on every syllable, looking hard all the time at Dora, whohad risen, and stood confronting him in a tremor of impatience anddisagreement. 

'Father Russell--' she began quickly, then changed her form ofexpression--'Mr. Russell says you can't settle things by justquoting a text. The Bible has to be explained, he says. '

Purcell's eyes flamed. He launched into a sarcastic harangue, delivered in a strong thick voice, on the subject of 'Sacerdotalism, ''priestly arrogance, ' 'lying traditions, ' 'making the command ofGod of no effect, ' and so forth. While his sermon rolled along, Dora stood nervously tying her bonnet strings, or buttoning hergloves. Her heart was full of a passionate scorn. Beside thebookseller's muscular figure and pugnacious head she saw withher mind's eye the spare forms and careworn faces of the youngpriests at St. Damian's. Outraged by this loud-voiced assurance, she called to mind the gentleness, the suavity, the delicateconsideration for women which obtained among her friends. 

'There's not a pin to choose, ' Purcell wound up, brutally, 'betweenyou and that young infidel in there, ' and he jerked his thumbtowards the shop. 'It all comes of pride. He's bursting with his ownwisdom, --you will have the "Church" and won't have the Bible. What's the Church!--a pack of sinners, and a million sinners are nobetter than one. '

'Good-bye, Lucy, ' said Dora, stooping to kiss her cousin, and nottrusting herself to speak. 'Call for me at the quarter. '

Lucy hardly noticed her kiss, she sat with her elbows on the table, holding her little chin disconsolately, something very like tearsin her eyes. In the first place, she was reflecting dolefully thatit was all true--she was never to have any amusement like othergirls--never to have any good of her life; she might as well be anun at once. In the second, she was certain her father meant tosend young Grieve away, and the prospect drew a still darker pallover a prospect dark enough in all conscience before. 

Purcell opened the door for Dora more punctiliously than usual, andcame back to the hearthrug still inflated as it were with his owneloquence. Meanwhile Lucy was washing up the tea things. The littleservant had brought her a bowl of water and an apron, and Lucy wasgoing gingerly through an operation she detested. Why shouldn'tMary Ann do it? What was the good of going to school and comingback with Claribel's songs and Blumenthal's _Deux Anges_ lyingon the top of your box, --with a social education, moreover, soadvanced that the dancing--mistress had invariably made you waltzalone round the room for the edification and instruction of theassembled company, --if all you had to do at home was to dust andwash up, and die with envy of girls with reprobate fathers? As shepondered the question, Lucy began to handle the cups with a moreand more unfriendly energy. 

'You'll break some of that china, Lucy!' said Purcell, at lastdisturbed in his thoughts. 'What's the matter with you?'

'Nothing!' said Lucy, taking, however, a saucer from the line asshe spoke so viciously that the rest of them slipped with a clatterand only just escaped destruction. 

'Mind what you're about, ' cried Purcell angrily, fearing for thehousehold stuff that had been in the establishment so much longerand was so much more at home there than Lucy. 

'I know what it is, ' he said, looking at her severely, while hisgreat black presence seemed to fill the little room. 'You've lostyour temper because I refused to let you go to the dance. '

Lucy was silent for a moment, trying to contain herself; then shebroke out like a child, throwing down her apron, and feeling forher handkerchief. 

'It's _too_ bad--it's _too_ bad--I'd rather be MaryAnn--_she's_ got friends, and evenings out--and--and partiessometimes; and I see nobody, and go nowhere. What did you have mehome for at all?'

And she sat down and dried her eyes piteously. She was in realdistress, but she liked a scene, and Purcell knew her peculiarities. He surveyed her with a sort of sombre indulgence. 

'You're a vain child of this world, Lucy. If I didn't keep alook-out on you, you'd soon go rejoicing down the broad way. Whatdo you mean about amusements? There's the missionary tea to-morrownight, and the magic-lantern at the schools on Saturday. '

Lucy gave a little hysterical laugh. 

'Well, ' said Purcell loudly, 'there'll be plenty of young peoplethere. What have you got to say against them?'

'A set of _frights_ and _gawks_, ' said Lucy, sitting boltupright in a state of flat mutiny, and crushing her handkerchief onher knee between a pair of trembling hands. 'The way they do theirhair, and the way they tie their ties, and the way they put a chairfor you--it's enough to make one faint. At the Christmas treatthere was one young man asked me to trim his shirt-cuffs for himwith scissors he took out of his pocket. I told him _I_wasn't his nurse, and people who weren't dressed ought to stay athome. You should have seen how he and his sister glared at meafterwards. I don't care! None of the chapel people like me--I knowthey don't, and I don't want them to, and I wouldn't _marry_one of them. '

The gesture of Lucy's curly head was superb. 

'It seems to me, ' said Purcell sarcastically, 'that what you mostlylearnt at Blackburn was envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. Asto marrying, child, the less you think of it for the present thebetter, till you get more sense. '

But the eyes which studied her were not unkindly. Purcell likedthis slim red and white creature who belonged to him, whoseeducation had cost him hard money which it gave him pleasure toreckon up, and who promised now to provide him with a fresh fieldfor the management and the coarse moral experiment which he loved. She would be restive at first, but he would soon break her in. Theidea that under her folly and childishness she might possiblyinherit some of his own tenacity never occurred to him. 

'I can't imagine, ' said Lucy inconsequently, with eyes once moreswimming, 'why you can't let me do what Dora does! She's _much_better than I am. She's a saint, she is. She's always going tochurch; she's always doing things for poor people; she never thinksabout herself, or whether she's pretty, or--Why shouldn't I danceif she does?'

Purcell laughed. 

'Aye!' he said grimly, 'that's the Papistical way all over. So manyservices, so much fasting, so much money, so much knocking under toyour priest, so much "church work"--and who cares a brass farthingwhat you do with the rest of your time? Do as I tell you, and danceaway! But I tell you, Christianity wants _a new heart_!'

And the bookseller looked at his daughter with a frowning severity. Conversation of this kind was his recreation, his accomplishment, so to speak. He had been conducting a difficult negotiation all dayof the diamond-cut-diamond order, and was tired out and disgustedby the amount of knowledge of books which even a gentleman maypossess. But here was compensation. A warm hearthrug, an unwillinglistener, and this sense of an incomparable soundness of view, --hewanted nothing more to revive him, unless, indeed, it were a largeraudience. 

As for Lucy, as she looked up at her father, even her childishintelligence rose to a sense of absurdity. As if Dora hadn't a newheart; as if Dora thought it was enough to go to church and givesixpences in the offertory!

But her father overawed her. She had been left motherless at tenyears old, and brought up since away from home, except forholidays. At the bottom of her she was quite conscious that sheknew nothing at all about this big contemptuous person, who orderedher about and preached to her, and never let himself be kissed andplayed with and coaxed as other girls' fathers did. 

So she went on with her washing up in a crushed silence, very sorryfor herself in a vague passionate way, the corners of her mouthdrooping. Purcell too fell into a reverie, the lower jaw pushedforward, one hand playing with the watch-chain which adorned hisblack suit. 

'Did you give Grieve that message?' he asked at last. 

Lucy, still sulky, nodded in reply. 

'What time did he come in from dinner?'

'On the stroke of the half-hour, ' said Lucy quickly. 'I think hekeeps time better than anybody you ever had, father. '

'Insolent young whelp!' said Purcell in a slow, deliberate voice. 'He was at that place again yesterday. '

'Yes, I know he was, ' said Lucy, with evident agitation. 'I told himhe ought to have been ashamed. '

'Oh, you talked to him, did you? What business had you to do that, I wonder? Well, what did he say?'

'He said--well, I don't know what he said. He don't seem to thinkit matters to anybody where he goes on Sunday!'

'Oh, indeed--don't he? I'll show him some cause to doubt the truthof that proposition, ' said Purcell ponderously; 'or I'll know thereason why. '

Lucy looked unhappy, and said nothing for a minute or two. Then shebegan insistently, 'Well, _does_ it matter to you?'

This deplorable question--viewed from the standpoint of a Baptistelder--passed unnoticed, for with the last words the shop-bellrang, and Purcell went off, transformed on the instant into thesharp, attentive tradesman. 

Lucy sat wiping her cups mechanically for a little while. Then, when they were all done, and Mary Ann had been loftily commanded toput them away, she slipped upstairs to her own room, a little atticat the top of the house. Here she went to a deal press, which hadbeen her mother's, opened it, and took out a dress which hung in acompartment by itself, enveloped in a holland wrapper, lestManchester smuts should harm it. She undid the wrapper, and laid iton the bed. It was an embroidered white muslin, adorned with laceand full knots of narrow pink ribbon. 

'What a trouble I had to get the ribbon just that width, ' shethought to herself ruefully, 'and everybody said it was so uncommon. I might as well give it Dora. I don't believe I shall ever wear it. I don't know what'll become of me. I don't get any chances. '

And shaking her head mournfully from side to side, she sat onbeside the dress, in the light of her solitary candle, her handsclasped round her knee, the picture of girlish despair, so far asanything so daintily gowned, and shoed, and curled, could achieveit. She was thinking drearily of some people who were coming tosupper, one of her father's brother elders at the chapel, Mr. Baruch Barton, and his daughter. Mr. Barton had a specialty for theprophet Zephaniah, and had been several times shocked because Lucycould not help him out with his quotations from that source. Hisdaughter, a little pinched asthmatic creature, in a dress whereofevery gore and seam was an affront to the art of dressmaking, wascertainly thirty, probably more. And between thirty and thePsalmist's limit of existence, there is the very smallestappreciable difference, in the opinion of seventeen. What_could_ she have to say to Emmy Barton? Lucy asked herself. She began yawning from sheer dulness, as she thought of her. If itwere only time to go to bed!

Suddenly she heard a sound of raised voices in the upper shop onthe floor below. What could it be? She started up. 'Mr. Grieve andfather quarrelling!' She knew it must come to that!

She crept down the stairs with every precaution possible till shecame to the door behind which the loud talk which had startled herwas going on. Here she listened with all her ears, but at first tovery little purpose. David was speaking, but so rapidly, andapparently so near to the other end of the room, that she couldbear nothing. Then her father broke in, and by dint of strainingvery hard, she caught most of what he said before the wholecolloquy came abruptly to an end. She heard Purcell's heavy treaddescending the little iron spiral staircase leading from the lowershop to the upper. She heard David moving about, as though he weregathering up books and papers, and then, with a loud childish sobwhich burst from her unawares, she ran upstairs again to her ownroom. 

'Oh, he's going, he's going!' she cried under her breath, as shestood before the glass winking to keep the tears back, and bitingher handkerchief hard between her little white teeth. 'Oh, whatshall I do? what shall I do? It'll be always the same; just whenanyone _might_ like me, it all stops. And he won't care onelittle, little bit. He'll never think of me again. Oh, I do thinksomebody might care about me--might be sorry for me!'

And she locked her hands tight before her, and stared at the glass, while the tears forced their way. But all the time she was noticinghow prettily she stood, how slim she was. And though she smarted, she would not for the world have been without her smart, herexcitement, her foolish secret, which, for sheer lack of somethingto do and think about, had suddenly grown to such magnitude in hereyes. It was hard to cherish a hopeless passion for a handsomeyouth, without a halfpenny, who despised you, but it was infinitelybetter than to have nothing in your mind but Emmy Barton and theprophet Zephaniah. Nay, as she washed her hands and smoothed herdress and hair with trembling fingers, she became quite friendlywith her pain--in a sense, even proud of it, and jealous forit. It was a sign of mature life--of something more than mereschool-girlishness. Like the lover in the Elizabethan sonnet, 'Shehad been vexed, if vexed she had not been!'

CHAPTER III

'Come in, David, ' said Mr. Ancrum, opening the door of his littlesitting-room in Mortimer Street. 'You're rather late, but I don'twonder. Such a wind! I could hardly stand against it myself. But, then, I'm an atomy. What, no top-coat in such weather! What do youmean by that, sir? You're wet through. There, dry yourself. '

David, with a grin at Mr. Ancrum's unnecessary concern for him, deposited himself in the carpet chair which formed the minister'sonly lounge, and held out his legs and arms to the blaze. He waswet indeed, and bespattered with the blackest mud in the threekingdoms. But the battle with wind and rain had so brought intoplay all the physical force of him, had so brightened eye andcheek, and tossed the black hair into such a fine confusion, that, as he sat there bending over the glow of the fire, the crippled manopposite, sickly with long confinement and over-thinking, could nottake his eyes from him. The storm with all its freshness, youthwith all its reckless joy in itself, seemed to have come in withthe lad and transformed the little dingy room. 

'What do you wear trash like that for in a temperature like this?'said the minister, touching his guest's thin and much-worn coat. 'Don't you know, David, that your health is money? Suppose you getlung trouble, who's to look after you?'

'It don't do me no harm, sir. I can't get into my last year's coat, and I couldn't afford a new one this winter. '

'What wages do you earn?' asked Ancrum. His manner was a curiousmixture of melancholy gentleness and of that terse sharpness inpractical things which the south country resents and the northcountry takes for granted. 

'Eighteen shillings a week, since last November, sir. '

'That ought to be enough for a top-coat, you rascal, with onlyyourself to feed, ' said Mr. Ancrum, stretching himself in his hardarmchair, so as to let his lame leg with its heavy boot restcomfortably on the fender. David had noticed at first sight of himthat his old playfellow had grown to look much older than in theClough End days. His hair was nearly white, and lay in a largesmooth wave across the broad brow. And in that brow there were deepfurrows, and many a new and premature line in the hollow cheeks. Something withering and blighting seemed to have passed over thewhole man since those Sunday school lessons in the ChristianBrethren's upper room, which David still remembered so well. Butthe eyes with their irresistible intensity and force were the same. In them the minister's youth--he was not yet thirty-five--stillspoke, as from a last stronghold in a failing realm. They had astrange look too, the look as of a secret life, not for thepasser-by. 

David smiled at Ancrum's last remark, and for a moment or twolooked into the fire without speaking. 

'Well, if I'd bought clothes or anything else this winter, I shouldbe in a precious worse hole than I am, ' he said reflectively. 

'Hole? What's wrong, Davy?'

'My master gave me the sack Monday. '

'Humph!' said Ancrum, surveying him. 'Well, you don't look much castdown about it, I must say. '

'Well, you see, I'd laid my plans, ' said the young man, anirrepressible gaiety and audacity in every feature. 'It isn't asthough I were taken by surprise. '

'Plans for a new place, I suppose?'

'No; I have done with that. I am going to set up for myself. I knowthe trade, and I've got some money. '

'How old are you, Davy?'

'Just upon twenty, ' said the lad, quietly. 

The minister pursed up his lips and whistled a little. 

'Well, that's bold, ' he said. 'Somehow I like it, though by all thelaws of prudence I ought to jump down your throat for announcingsuch a thing. But how did you get your money? and what have youbeen doing these four years? Come, I'm an old friend, --though Idare say you don't think me much of a fellow. Out with it! Pay meanyway for all those ships I made you long ago. '

And he held out his blanched hand, little more now than skin andbone. David put his own into it awkwardly enough. At this period ofhis life he was not demonstrative. 

The story he had to tell was, to Ancrum's thinking, a remarkableone. He had come into Manchester on an October evening with fiveshillings and threepence in his pocket. From a point on thesouth-western border of the city he took a 'bus for Deansgate andVictoria Street. As he was sitting on the top, feeding his eyes onthe lights and the crowd of the streets, but wholly ignorant whereto go and what first step to take, he fell into talk with a decentworking-man and his wife sitting beside him. The result of the talkwas that they offered him shelter at fourpence a night. Hedismounted with them at Blackfriars Bridge, and they made their wayacross the river to a street in Salford, where he lodged with themfor a week. During that week he lived on oatmeal and an occasionalbaked potato, paying his hostess eighteenpence additional for theuse of her fire, and the right to sit in her kitchen when he wasnot tramping about in search of work. By the end of the week he hadfound a post as errand-boy at a large cheap bookseller's andstationer's in Deansgate, at eight shillings a week, his goodlooks, manner, and education evidently helping him largely, as Mr. Ancrum could perceive through the boy's very matter-of-fact accountof himself. He then made an agreement for bed, use of fire, andkitchen, with his new friends at four shillings a week, and by theend of six months he was receiving a wage of fourteen shillings assalesman and had saved close on five pounds. 

'Well, now, come, how did you manage that, Davy?' said Mr. Ancrum, interrupting. 'Don't run on in that fashion. Details are the onlyinteresting things in life, and details I'll have. You must havefound it a precious tight fit to save that five pounds. '

Whereupon David, his eye kindling, ran out Benjamin Franklin andthe 'Vegetarian News, ' his constant friends from the first day ofhis acquaintance with the famous autobiography till now, in spiteof such occasional lapses into carnal feeding as he had confessedto Daddy. In a few minutes Ancrum found himself buried in 'details'as to 'flesh-forming' and 'bone-forming' foods, as to nitrogen andalbumen, as to the saving qualities of fruit, and Heaven knows whatbesides. Long before the enthusiast had spent his breath or hisdetails, the minister cried 'Enough!'

'Young materialist, ' he said growling, 'what do you mean at your ageby thinking so much about your body?'

'It wasn't my body, sir, ' said David, simply, 'it was just business. If I had got ill, I couldn't have worked; if I had lived like otherchaps, I couldn't have saved. So I had to know something about it, and it wasn't bad fun. After a bit I got the people I lodged withto eat a lot of the things I eat--and that was cheaper for me ofcourse. The odd thing about vegetarianism is that you come not tocare a rap what you eat. Your taste goes somehow. So long as you'renourished and can do your work, that's all you want. '

The minister sat studying his visitor a minute or two in silence, though the eyes under the care-worn brow were bright and restless. Any defiance of the miserable body was in itself delightful to aman who had all but slain himself many times over in the soul'sservice. He, too, had been living on a crust for months, denyinghimself first this, then that ingredient of what should have beenan invalid's diet. But it had been for cause--for the poor--forself-mortification. There was something just a little jarring tothe ascetic in this contact with a self-denial of the purelyrationalistic type, so easy--so cheerful--put forward without thesmallest suspicion of merit, as a mere business measure. 

David resumed his story. By the end of another six months itappeared that he had grown tired of his original shop, with itsvast masses of school stationery and cheap new books. As might havebeen expected from his childish antecedents, he had been soon laidhold of by the old bookstalls, had read at them on his way fromwork, had spent on them all that he could persuade himself to sparefrom his hoard, and in a year from the time he entered Manchester, thanks to wits, reading, and chance friendships, was already abudding bibliophile. Slates and primers became suddenly odious to aperson aware of the existence of Aldines and Elzevirs, and bittenwith the passion, then just let loose on the book-buying world, forfirst editions of the famous books of the century. Whenever thatsum in the savings bank should have reached a certain height, hewould become a second-hand bookseller with a stall. Till then hemust save more and learn his trade. So at the end of his first yearhe left his employers, and by the help of excellent recommendationsfrom them got the post of assistant in Purcell's shop in HalfStreet, at a rise of two shillings, afterwards converted into fourshillings a week. 

'And I've been there three years--very near, ' said David, straightening himself with a little nervous gesture peculiar tohim. 'If you'd been anywhere about, sir, you'd have wondered how Icould have stayed so long. But I wanted to learn the trade and I'velearnt it--no thanks to old Purcell. '

'What was wrong with him?'

'Mostly brains!' said the lad, with a scornful but not unattractiveconceit. 'He was a hard master to live with--that don't matter. Buthe is a fool! I don't mean to say he don't know a lot about somethings--but he thinks he knows everything--and he don't. And he'llnot let anyone tell him--not he! Once, if you'll believe it, he gotthe Aldine Virgil of 1501, for twenty-five shillings--came from agentleman out Eccles way--a fellow selling his father's library anddidn't know bad from good, --real fine tall copy, --binding poor, --but a _stunner_ take it altogether--worth twenty pounds toQuaritch or Ellis, any day. Well, all I could do, he let a man haveit for five shillings profit next day, just to spite me, I believe, because I told him it was a good thing. Then he got sick aboutthat, I believe, though he never let out, and the next time hefound anything that looked good, --giminy!--but he put it on. Nowyou know, sir'--Mr. Ancrum smiled at the confidential eagerness ofthe expert--'you know, sir, it's not many of those Venice orFlorence Dantes that are worth anything. If you get the firstedition of Landino's 'Commentary, ' or the other man's, Imola's, isn't it--'

The minister lifted his eyebrows--the Italian came out pat, and, sofar as he knew, right--

'Well, of course, _they're_ worth money--always fetchtheir price. But the later editions are no good at all--nobody but agentleman-collector, very green, you know, sir'--the twinkle in theboy's eye showed how much his subject was setting him at hisease--'would be bothered with them. Well, if he didn't get hold ofan edition of 1540 or so--worth about eight shillings, and dear atthat--and send it up to one of the London men as a good thing. Hemakes me pack it and send it and _register_ it--you might havethought it was the Mazarin Bible, bar size. And then, of course, next day, down comes the book again flying, double quick. I keptout of his way, post-time! But I'd have given something to see theletter he got. '

And David, rising, put his hands in his pockets, and stood beforethe fire chuckling with irrepressible amusement. 

'Well, then you know there's the first editions of Rousseau--not abit rare, as rare goes--lucky if you get thirty shillings for the"Contrat Social, " or the "Nouvelle Heloise, " even good copies--'

Again the host's eyebrows lifted. The French names ran remarkably;there was not the least boggling over them. But he said nothing, and David rattled on, describing, with a gusto which never failed, one of Purcell's book-selling enormities after another. It wasevident that he despised his master with a passionate contempt. Itwas evident also that Purcell had shown a mean and unreasoningjealousy of his assistant. The English tradesman inherits adomineering tradition towards his subordinates, and in Purcell'scase, as we know, the instincts of an egotistical piety hadreinforced those of the employer. Yet Mr. Ancrum felt some sympathywith Purcell. 

'Well, Davy, ' he said at last, 'so you were too 'cute for your man, that's plain. But I don't suppose he put it on that ground when hegave you the sack?'

And he looked up, with a little dry smile. 

'No!' cried David, abruptly. 'No! not he. If you go and ask_him_ he'll tell you he sent me off because I would go to theSecularist meetings at the Hall of Science, and air myself as anatheist; that's his way of putting it. And it was doing him harmwith his religious customers! As if I was going to let him dictatewhere I went on Sundays!'

'Of course not, ' said Ancrum, with a twist of his oddly shapedmouth. 'Even the very youngest of us might sometimes be the betterfor advice; but, hang it, let's be free--free to "make fools ofourselves, " as a wise man hath it. Well, Davy, no offence, ' for hisguest had flushed suddenly. 'So you go to the Hall of Science? Didyou hear Holyoake and Bradlaugh there the other night? You likethat kind of thing?'

'I like to hear it, ' said the lad, stoutly, meeting his oldteacher's look, half nervously, half defiantly. 'It's a great dealmore lively than what you hear at most churches, sir. And whyshouldn't one hear everything?'

This was not precisely the tone which the same culprit had adoptedtowards Dora Lomax. The Voltairean suddenly felt himself to bemaking excuses--shabby excuses--in the presence of somebodyconnected, however distantly, with _l'infame_. He drew himselfup with an angry shake of his whole powerful frame. 

'Oh, why not?' said Ancrum, with a shrug, 'if life's longenough'--and he absently lifted and let fall a book which lay onthe table beside him; it was Newman's 'Dream of Gerontius'--'iflife's long enough, and--happy enough! Well, so you've beenlearning French, I can hear. Teaching yourself?'

'No; there's an old Frenchman, old Barbier--do you know him, sir?He gives lessons at a shilling an hour. Very few people go to himnow; they want younger men. And there's lot's of them about. Butold Barbier knows more about books than any of them, I'll be bound. '

'Has he introduced you to French novels? I never read any; butthey're bad, of course--must be. In all those things I'm aBritisher and believe what the Britishers say. '

'We're just at the end of "Manon Lescaut, "' said David, doggedly. 'And partly with him, partly by myself, I've read a bit ofRousseau--and a good lot of Diderot, --and Voltaire. '

David threw an emphasis into the last name, which was meant toatone to himself for the cowardice of a few minutes before. The oldboyish feeling towards Mr. Ancrum, which had revived in him when heentered the room, had gradually disappeared again. He bore theminister no real grudge for having forgotten him, but he wished itto be clearly understood that the last fragments of the ChristianBrethren yoke had dropped from his neck. 

'Ah! don't know anything about them, ' said Ancrum, slowly; 'butthen, as you know, I'm a very ignorant person. Well, now, was itVoltaire took you to the secularists, or the secularists toVoltaire?'

David laughed, but did not give a reply immediately. 

'Well, never mind, ' said the minister, 'All Christians are fools, ofcourse--that's understood. --Is that all you have been learningthese four years?'

'I work at Latin every morning, ' said David, very red, and on hisdignity. 'I've begun Greek, and I go to the science classes, mathematics and chemistry, at the Mechanics' Institute. '

Mr. Ancrum's face softened. 

'Why, I'll be bound you have to go to work pretty early, Davy?'

'Seven o'clock, sir, I take the shutters down. But I get an hourand a half first, and three hours in the evening. This winter I'vegot through the "Aeneid, " and Horace's "Epistles" and "ArsPoetica. " Do you remember, sir?'--and the lad's voice grew sharponce more, tightening as it were under the pressure of eagernessand ambition from beneath--'do you remember that Scaliger read the"Iliad" in twenty days, and was a finished Greek scholar in twoyears? Why can't one do that now?'

'Why shouldn't you?' said Mr. Ancrum, looking up at him. 'Who helpsyou in your Greek?'

'No one; I get translations. '

'Well, now, look here, Davy. I'm an ignorant person, as I told you, but I learnt some Latin and Greek at Manchester New College. Cometo me in the evenings, and I'll help you with your Greek, unlessyou've got beyond me. Where are you?'

The budding Scaliger reported himself. He had read the 'Anabasis, 'some Herodotus, three plays of Euripides, and was now making somedesperate efforts on Aeschylus and Sophocles. Any Plato? David madea face. He had read two or three dialogues in English; didn't wantto go on, didn't care about him. Ah! Ancrum supposed not. 

'Twelve hours' shop, ' said the minister reflecting, 'more or less, --two hours' work before shop, --three hours or so after shop;that's what you may call driving it hard. You couldn't do it, Richard Ancrum, ' and he shook his head with a whimsical melancholy. 'But you were always a poor starveling. Youth that _is_youth's tough. Don't tell me, sir, ' and he looked up sharply, 'thatyou don't amuse yourself. I wouldn't believe it. There never was aman built like you yet that didn't amuse himself. '

David smiled, but said nothing. 

'Billiards?'

'No, sir. '

'Betting?'

'No, sir. They cost money. '

'Niggardly dog! Drink?--no, I'll answer that for myself. '

The minister dropped his catechism, and sat nursing his lame legand thinking. Suddenly he broke out with, 'How many young women areyou in love with, David?'

David showed his white teeth. 

'I only know two, sir. One's my master's daughter--she's rather apretty girl, I think--'

'That'll do. You're not in love with her. Who's the other?'

'The other's Mr. Lomax's daughter, --Lomax of the Parlour, thatqueer restaurant, sir, in Market Place. She--well, I don't know howto describe her. She's not good-looking--at least, I don't thinkso, ' he added dubiously. 'She's very High Church, and fasts allLent. I think she does Church embroidery. '

'And doesn't think any the better of you for attending the Hall ofScience? Sensible girl! Still, when people mean to fall in love, they don't think twice of that sort of thing. I make a note ofLomax's daughter. Ah! enter supper. David, if you let any 'ismstand between you and that veal pie, I despair of your future. '

David, however, in the course of the meal, showed himself assuperior to narrowness of view in the matter of food-stuffs as inother matters. The meal went merrily. Mr. Ancrum dropped hishalf-sarcastic tone, and food, warmth, and talk loosened the lad'sfibres, and made him more and more human, handsome, and attractive. Soon his old friend knew all that he wanted to know, --the sum Davidhad saved--thirty pounds in the savings-bank--the sort of stock hemeant to set up, the shop he had taken--with a stall, of course--nobeginner need hope to prosper without a stall. Customers must bedelicately angled for at a safe distance--show yourself too much, and, like trout, they flashed away. See everything, force nothing. Let a book be turned over for nineteen days, the chances were thaton the twentieth you would turn over the price. As to expecting theclass of cheap customers to commit themselves by walking into ashop, it was simple madness. Of course, when you were 'established, 'that was another matter. 

By the help of a certain wealthy Unitarian, one Mr. Doyle, withwhom he had made friends in Purcell's shop, and whom he had boldlyasked for the use of his name as a reference, the lad had taken--soit appeared--a small house in Potter Street, a narrow butfrequented street in the neighbourhood of Deansgate and all thegreat banks and insurance offices in King Street. His shop took upthe ground floor. The two floors above were let, and the tenantswould remain. But into the attics and the parlour kitchen behindthe shop, he meant, ultimately, when he could afford it, to puthimself and his sister. He could only get the house on a yearlytenancy, as it and the others near it were old, and would probablybe rebuilt before long. But meanwhile the rent was all the lowerbecause of the insecurity of tenure. 

At the mention of the boy's sister, Ancrum looked up with a start. 

'Ah, to be sure! What became of that poor child after you left? TheClough End friends who wrote to me of your disappearance had morepity for her, Davy, than they had for you. '

A sudden repulsion and reserve darkened the black eyes opposite. 

'There was no helping it, ' he said with hasty defiance. There was amoment's silence. Then a wish to explain himself rose in David. 

'I couldn't have stayed, sir, ' he said, with a curioushalf-reproachful accent. 'I told you about how it was before youleft. And there were other things. I should have cut my own throator some one else's if it had gone on. But I haven't forgottenLouie. You remember Tom Mullins at the foundry. He's written meevery month. I paid him for it. I know all about Louie, and theydon't know anything about me. They think I'm in America. '

His eyes lit again with the joy of contrivance. 

'Is that kind, Davy?'

'Yes, sir--' and for the first time the minister heard in the boy'svoice the tone of a man's judgment. 'I couldn't have Louie on mejust yet. I was going to ask you, sir, not to tell the people atClough End you've seen me. It would make it very hard. You knowwhat Louie is--and she's all right. She's learnt a trade. '

'What trade?'

'Silk-weaving--from Margaret Dawson. '

'Poor soul--poor saint! There'd be more things than her trade to belearnt from Margaret Dawson if anyone had a mind to learn them. What of 'Lias?'

'Oh, he died, sir, a week after I left. ' The lad's voice dropped. Then he added slowly, looking away, 'Tom said he was very quiet--hedidn't suffer much--not at the end. '

'Aye, the clouds lift at sunset, ' said Mr. Ancrum in an alteredtone; 'the air clears before the night!'

His head fell forward on his breast, and he sat drumming on thetable. They had finished supper, the little, bustling landlady hadcleared away, and Davy was thinking of going. Suddenly the ministersprang up and stood before the fire, looking down at his guest. 

'Davy, do you want to know why I didn't write to you? I was illfirst--very ill; then--_I was in hell!_'

David started. Into the thin, crooked face, with the seeking eyes, there had flashed an expression--sinister, indescribable, a sort ofdumb rage. It changed the man altogether. 

'I was in hell!' he repeated slowly. 'I know no more about it. Otherpeople may tell you, perhaps, if you come across them--I can't. There were days at Clough End--always a certain number in theyear--when this earth slipped away from me, and the fiends cameabout me, but this was months. They say I was overdone in thecotton famine years ago just before I came to Clough End. I gotpneumonia after I left you that May--it doesn't matter. When I knewthere was a sun again, I wrote to ask about you. You had leftKinder and gone--no one knew where. '

David sat nervously silent, not knowing what to say, his mindgradually filling with the sense of something tragic, irreparable. Mr. Ancrum, too, stood straight before him, as though turned tostone. A t last David got up and approached him. Had Ancrum beenlooking he must have been touched by the change in the lad'sexpression. The hard self-reliant force of the face had melted intofeeling. 

'Are you better now, sir? I knew you must have been ill, ' hestammered. 

Ancrum started as though just wakened. 

'Ill? Yes, I was pretty bad, ' he said briskly, and in his mostordinary tone, though with a long breath. ' But I'm as fit asanything now. Good night, Davy, good night. Come a walk with mesome day? Sunday afternoon? Done. Here, write me your new address. '

The tall form and curly black head disappeared, the littlelodging-house room, with its round rosewood table, its horsehairsofa, its chiffonnier, and its prints of 'Sport at Balmoral' and'The Mother's Kiss, ' had resumed the dingy formality of every day. 

The minister sank into his seat and held his hands out over theblaze. He was in pain. All life was to him more or less a strugglewith physical ill. But it was not so primarily that he conceivedit. The physical ill was nothing except as representing aphilosophical necessity. 

That lad, with all his raw certainties--of himself, his knowledge, his Voltaire--the poor minister felt once or twice a piteousenvy of him, as he sat on through the night hours. Life wasill-apportioned. The poor, the lonely, the feeble--it is they whowant certainty, want hope most. And because they are lonely andfeeble, because their brain tissues are diseased, and their lifefrom no fault of their own unnatural, nature who has made themdooms them to despair and doubt. Is there any 'soul, ' any'personality' for the man who is afflicted and weakened withintermittent melancholia? Where is his identity, where hisresponsibility? And if there is none for him, how does the accidentof health bestow them on his neighbour?

Questions of this sort had beset Richard Ancrum for years. On thelittle book-table to his right lay papers of Huxley's, ofClifford's, and several worn volumes of mental pathology. Thebrooding intellect was for ever raising the same problem, the samespectre world of universal doubt, in which God, conscience, faith, were words without a meaning. 

But side by side with the restlessness of the intellect there hadalways gone the imperious and prevailing claim of temperament. Beside Huxley and Clifford, lay Newman's 'Sermons' and 'Apologia, 'and a little High Church manual of self-examination. And on thewall above the book-table hung a memorandum-slate on which were anumber of addresses and dates--the addresses of some forty boyswhom the minister taught on Sunday in one of the Unitarian Sundayschools of Manchester, and visited in the week. The care andtraining of street arabs had been his passion when he was still astudent at Manchester New College. Then had come his moment ofutterance--a thirst for preaching, for religious influence; thoughhe could not bring himself to accept any particular shibboleth ortake any kind of orders. He found something congenial for a time toa deep though struggling faith in the leadership of the ChristianBrethren. Now, however, something had broken in him; he couldpreach no more. But he could go back to his old school; he couldteach his boys on Sundays and week days; he could take them outcountry walks in spite of his lame limb; he could deny himself eventhe commonest necessaries of life for their sake; he could watchover each of them with a fervour, a moral intensity which wore himout. In this, in some insignificant journalism for a religiouspaper, and in thinking, he spent his life. 

There had been a dark page in his history. He had hardly leftManchester New College when he married suddenly a girl of somebeauty, but with an undeveloped sensuous temperament. They were tolive on a crust and give themselves to the service of man. His owndream was still fresh when she deserted him in the company of oneof his oldest friends. He followed them, found them both in blackdepths of remorse, and took her back. But the strain of livingtogether proved too much. She implored him to let her go and earnher living apart. She had been a teacher, and she proposed toreturn to her profession. He saw her established in Glasgow in thehouse of some good people who knew her history, and who got her apost in a small school. Then he returned to Manchester and threwhimself with reckless ardour into the work of feeding the hungry, and nursing the dying, in the cotton famine. He emerged a brokenman, physically and morally, liable thenceforward to recurrentcrises of melancholia; but they were not frequent or severe enoughto prevent his working. He was at the time entirely preoccupiedwith certain religious questions, and thankfully accepted the callto the little congregation at Clough End. 

Since then he had visited his wife twice every year. He wasextremely poor. His family, who had destined him for thePresbyterian ministry, were estranged from him; hardly anyone inManchester knew him intimately; only in one house, far away in theScotch lowlands, were there two people, who deeply loved andthoroughly understood him. There he went when his dark hours cameupon him; and thence, after the terrible illness which overtook himon his leaving Clough End, he emerged again, shattered butindomitable, to take up the battle of life as he understood it. 

He was not an able nor a literary man. His mind was a strangemedley, and his mental sight far from clear. Of late the study ofNewman had been a revelation to him. But he did not cease for thatto read the books of scientific psychology which tortured him--thebooks which seemed to make of mind a function of matter, and manthe slave of an immoral nature. 

The only persistent and original gift in him--yet after all it isthe gift which for ever divides the sheep from the goats--was thatof a 'hunger and thirst after righteousness. '

CHAPTER IV

It was towards noon on a November day, and Dora Lomax sat workingat her embroidery frame in the little sitting-room overlookingMarket Place. The pale wintry sun touched her bent head, her deftlymoving hand, and that device of the risen Christ circled in goldenflame on which she was at work. The room in which she sat was oldand low; the ceiling bulged here and there, the floor hadunexpected slopes and declivities. The furniture was of thecheapest, the commonest odds and ends of a broker's shop, for themost part. There was the usual horsehair suite, the usual cheapsideboard, and dingy druggeting of a large geometrical pattern. Butamid these uninviting articles there were a few things which gavethe room individuality--some old prints of places abroad, ofdifferent shapes and sizes, which partly disguised the blue andchocolate paper on the walls; some bits of foreign carving, Swissand Italian; some eggs and shells and stuffed birds, some of theselast from the Vosges, some from the Alps; a cageful of canaries, singing their best against the noise of Manchester; and, lastly, anold bookcase full of miscellaneous volumes, mostly large andworthless 'sets' of old magazines and encyclopaedias, whichrepresented the relics of Daddy's bookselling days. 

The room smelt strongly of cooking, a mingled odour of boilinggreens and frying onions and stored apples which never deserted it, and produced a constant slight sense of nausea in Dora, who, likemost persons of sedentary occupation, was in matters of eating anddigestion somewhat sensitive and delicate. From below, too, thereseemed to spread upwards a general sense of bustle and disquiet. Doors banged, knives and plates rattled perpetually, the greatswing-door into the street was for ever opening and shutting, eachtime shaking the old, frail house with its roughly built additionsthrough and through, and there was a distant skurry of voices thatnever paused. The restaurant indeed was in full work, and Daddy'svoice could be heard at intervals, shouting and chattering. Dorahad been at work since half-past seven, marketing, giving orders, making up accounts, writing bills of fare, and otherwise organisingthe work of the day. Now she had left the work for an hour or twoto her father and the stout Lancashire cook with her varioushandmaidens. Daddy's irritable pride liked to get her out of theway and make a lady of her as much as she would allow, and in hersecret heart she often felt that her embroidery, for which she waswell paid as a skilled and inventive hand, furnished a securerbasis for their lives than this restaurant, which, in spite of itsapparent success, was a frequent source of dread and discomfort toher. The money obligation it involved filled her sometimes with akind of panic. She knew her father so well!

Now, as she sat absorbed in her work, sewing her heart into it, forevery stitch in it delighted not only her skilled artistic sensebut her religious feeling, little waves of anxious thought sweptacross her one after another. She was a person of timid andbrooding temperament, and her father's eccentricities and pasthistory provided her with much just cause for worry. But to-day shewas not thinking much of him. 

Again and again there came between her and her silks a face, a faceof careless pride and power, framed in strong waves of black hair. It had once repelled her quite as much as it attracted her. But atany rate, ever since she had first seen it, it had taken a placeapart in her mind, as though in the yielding stuff of memory andfeeling one impression out of the thousands of every day had, without warning, yet irrevocably, stamped itself deeper than therest. The owner of it--David Grieve--filled her now, as always, with invincible antagonisms and dissents. But still the thought ofhim had in some gradual way become of late part of her habitualconsciousness, associated always, and on the whole painfullyassociated, with the thought of Lucy Purcell. 

For Lucy was such a little goose! To think of the way in which shehad behaved towards young Grieve in the fortnight succeeding hisnotice to quit, before he finally left Purcell's service, made Dorahot all over. How could Lucy demean herself so? and show suchtempers and airs towards a man who clearly did not think anythingat all about her? And now she had flung herself upon Dora, imploring her cousin to help her, and threatening desperate thingsunless she and David were still enabled to meet. And meanwhilePurcell had flatly forbidden any communication between hishousehold and the young reprobate he had turned out, whosethreatened prosperity made at this moment the angry preoccupationof his life. 

What was Dora to do? Was she to aid and abet Lucy, against herfather's will, in pursuing David Grieve? And if in spite of allappearances the little self-willed creature succeeded, and Dorawere the means of her marrying David, how would Dora's consciencestand? Here was a young man who believed in nothing, and openlysaid so, who took part in those terrible atheistical meetings anddiscussions, which, as Father Russell had solemnly said, were likea plague-centre in Manchester, drawing in and corrupting soul aftersoul. And Dora was to help in throwing her young cousin, while shewas still almost a child with no 'Church principles' to aid andprotect her, into the hands of this enemy of the Lord and HisChurch?

Then, when it came to this point, Dora would be troubled and drawnaway by memories of young Grieve's talk and ways, of his dashesinto Market Place to see Daddy since he had set up for himself, ofhis bold plans for the future which delighted Daddy and took herbreath away; of the flash of his black eyes; the triumphant energyof his youth; and those indications in him, too, which had sostartled her of late since they--she and he--had dropped the futilesparrings in which their acquaintance began, of an inner softness, a sensitive magnetic something--indescribable. 

Dora's needle paused in mid-air. Then her hand dropped on her lap. A slight but charming smile--born of youth, sympathy, involuntaryadmiration--dawned on her face. She sat so for a minute or two lostin reminiscence. 

The clock outside struck twelve. Dora with a start felt along theedge of her frame under her work and brought out a book. It was alittle black, worn manual of prayers for various times andoccasions compiled by a High Church dignitary. For Dora it had atalismanic virtue. She turned now to one of the 'Prayers forNoonday, ' made the sign of the cross, and slipped on to her kneesfor an instant. Then she rose happily and went back to her work. Itwas such acts as this that made the thread on which her life ofmystical emotion was strung. 

But her father was a Secularist of a pronounced type, and hermother had been a rigid Baptist, old-fashioned and sincere, filledwith a genuine horror of Papistry and all its ways. 

Adrian O'Connor Lomax, to give Daddy his whole magnificent name, was the son of a reed-maker, of Irish extraction, at Hyde, and wasbrought up at first to follow his father's trade--that of makingthe wire 'reed, ' or frame, into which the threads of the warp arefastened before weaving. But such patient drudgery, oftencontinued, as it was in those days, for twelve and fourteen hoursout of the twenty-four, was gall and wormwood to a temperament likeDaddy's. He developed a taste for reading, fell in with Byron'spoems, and caught the fever of them; then branched out intopolitics just at the time of the first Reform Bill, when all overLancashire the memory of Peterloo was still burning, and when menlike Henry Hunt and Samuel Bamford were the political heroes ofevery weaver's cottage. He developed a taste for itinerantlecturing and preaching, and presently left his family and trampedto Manchester. 

Here after many vicissitudes--including an enthusiastic and on thewhole creditable participation, as an itinerant lecturer, in themovement for the founding of Mechanics' Institutes, then spreadingall over the north--Daddy, to his ill-fortune, came across hisfuture brother-in-law, the bookseller Purcell. At the moment Daddywas in a new and unaccustomed phase of piety. After a period ofrevolutionary spouting, in which Byron, Tom Paine, and the variouspublications of Richard Carlile had formed his chief scriptures, acertain Baptist preacher laid hold of the Irishman's mercurialsense. Daddy was awakened and converted, burnt his Byron and hisTom Paine in his three-pair back with every circumstance of insultand contumely, and looked about for an employer worthy of one ofthe elect. Purcell at the time had a shop in one of the mainstreets connecting Manchester and Salford; he was already an elderat the chapel Daddy frequented; the two made acquaintance and Lomaxbecame Purcell's assistant. At the moment the trade offered to himattracted Daddy vastly. He had considerable pretensions toliterature; was a Shakespearian, a debater, and a haunter of acertain literary symposium, held for a long time at one of the oldManchester inns, and attended by most of the small wits and poetsof a then small and homely town. The gathering had nothing saintlyabout it; free drinking went often hand in hand with free thought;Daddy's infant zeal was shocked, but Daddy's instincts wereinvincible, and he went. 

The result of the bookselling experiment has been already told byDaddy himself. It was, of course, inevitable. Purcell was then ayoung man, but in his dealings with Daddy he showed precisely thesame cast-iron self-importance, the same slowness of brain coupledwith the same assumptions of an unbounded and righteous authority, the same unregenerate greediness in small matters of gain and losswhich now in his later life had made him odious to David Grieve. Moreover, Daddy, by a happy instinct, had at once made common causewith Purcell's downtrodden sister, going on even, as his passionatesense of opposition developed, to make love to the poor humblething mainly for the sake of annoying the brother. The crisis came;the irritated tyrant brought down a heavy hand, and Daddy andIsabella disappeared together from the establishment in ChapelStreet. 

By the time Daddy had set up as the husband of Purcell's sister ina little shop precisely opposite to that of his former employer, hehad again thrown over all pretensions to sanctity, was, on thecontrary, convinced afresh that all religion was one vast perennialimposture, dominated, we may suppose, in this as in most othermatters, by the demon of hatred which now possessed him towards hisbrother-in-law. His wife, poor soul, was beginning to feel herselftied for good to the tail of a comet destined to some mad career orother, and quite uncontrollable by any efforts of hers. Lomax hadmarried her for the most unpromising reasons in the world, and hesoon tired of her, and of the trade, which required a sustainedeffort, which he was incapable of giving. As long as Purcellremained opposite, indeed, hate and rivalry kept him up to themark. He was an attractive figure at that time, with his long fairhair and his glancing greenish eyes; and his queer discursive talkattracted many a customer, whom he would have been quite competentto keep had his character been of the same profitable stuff as hisability. 

But when Purcell vanished across the river into Manchester, thezest of Daddy's bookselling enterprise departed also. He began toneglect his shop, was off here and there lecturing and debating, and when he came back again it was plain to the wife their scantymoney had been squandered on other excesses than those of talk. Atlast the business fell to ruins, and debts pressed. Then suddenlyDaddy was persuaded by a French commercial traveller to take up hisold trade of reed-making, and go and seek employment across theChannel, where reed-makers were said to be in demand. 

In ecstasy at the idea of travel thus presented to him, Daddydevoured what books about France he could get hold of, and tried toteach himself French. Then one morning, without a word to his wife, he stole downstairs and out of the shop, and was far on the road toLondon before his flight was discovered. His poor wife shed sometears, but he had ceased to care for her she believed, largelybecause she had brought him no children, and his habits had begunto threaten to lead her with unpleasant rapidity to the workhouse. So she took comfort, and with the help of some friends set up alittle stationery and fancy business, which just kept her alive. 

Meanwhile Lomax found no work in Picardy, whither he had firstgone, and ultimately wandered across France to Alsace, in search ofbread, a prey to all possible hardships and privations. But nothingdaunted him. The glow of adventure and romance was on everylandscape. Cathedrals, forests, the wide river-plains of centralFrance, with their lights and distances, --all things on this newearth and under these new heavens 'haunted him like a passion. ' Hetravelled in perpetual delight, making love no doubt here and thereto some passing Mignon, and starving with the gayest of hearts. 

At Mulhausen he found work, and being ill and utterly destitute, submitted to it for a while. But as soon as he had got back hishealth and saved some money, he set out again, walking this time, staff in hand, over the whole Rhine country and into theNetherlands. There in the low Dutch plains he fell ill again, andthe beauty of the Rhineland was no longer there to stand like aspell between him and the pains of poverty. He seemed to come tohimself, after a dream in which the world and all its forms hadpassed him by 'apparelled in celestial light. ' And the process ofself-finding was attended by some at least of those salutary pangswhich eternally belong to it. He suddenly took a resolution, crepton board a coal smack going from a Dutch port to Grimsby, toiledacross Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and appeared one evening, wornto a shadow, in his wife's little shop in Salford. 

He was received as foolish women in whom there is no ineradicabletaint of cruelty or hate will always receive the prodigal whoreturns. And when Daddy had been fed and clothed, he turned out fora time to be so amiable, so grateful a Daddy, such good company, ashe sat in the chair by his wife's fire and told stories of histravels to her and anybody else who might drop in, that not onlythe wife but the neighbourhood was appeased. His old friends cameback to him, he began to receive overtures to write in some of thehumbler papers, to lecture on his adventures in the Yorkshire andLancashire towns. Daddy expanded, harangued, grew daily in goodlooks and charm under his wife's eyes. 

At last one day the papers came in with news of Louis Philippe'soverthrow. Daddy grew restless, and began to study the foreign newswith avidity. Revolution spread, and what with democracy abroad andChartism at home, there was more stimulus in the air than suchbrains as Daddy's could rightly stand. One May day he walked intothe street, looked hesitatingly up and down it, shading his eyesagainst the sun. Then with a shake of his long hair, as of onethrowing off a weight, he drew his hat from under his arm, put iton, felt in his pockets, and set off at a run, head downwards, while poor Isabella Lomax was sweeping her kitchen. During the nextfew days he was heard of, rumour said, now here, now there, but onemight as well have attempted to catch and hold the Pied Piper. 

He was away for rather more than twenty months. Then one day, asbefore, a lean, emaciated, sun-browned figure came slowly up theSalford street, looking for a familiar door. It was Daddy. He wentinto the shop, which was empty, stared, with a countenance in whichrelief and repulsion were oddly mingled, at the boxes ofstationery, at the dusty counter with its string and glass cases, when suddenly the inside door, which was standing ajar, was pushedstealthily inwards, and a child stood in the doorway. It was atottering baby of a year old, holding in one fat hand a crust ofbread which it had been sucking. When it saw the stranger it lookedat him gravely for a second. Then without a trace of fear orshyness it came forward, holding up its crust appealingly, its rosychin and lips still covered with bread-crumbs. 

Daddy stared at the apparition, which seemed to him the merestwitchcraft. For it was _himself_, dwarfed to babyhood andpinafores. His eyes, his prominent brow, his colour, his trick ofholding the head--they were all there, absurdly there. 

He gave a cry, which was answered by another cry from behind. Hiswife stood in the door. The stout, foolish Isabella was white tothe lips. Even she felt the awe, the poetry of the moment. 

'Aye, ' she said, trembling. 'Aye! it's yourn. It was born sevenmonths after yo left us. '

Daddy, without greeting his wife, threw himself down by the babe, and burst into tears. He had come back in a still darker mood thanon his first return, his egotistical belief in himself more rudelyshaken than ever by the attempts, the failures, the miseries of thelast eighteen months. For one illuminating moment he saw that hewas a poor fool, and that his youth was squandered and gone. But inits stead, there--dropped suddenly beside him by the forgivinggods--stood this new youth sprung from his, and all his own, thischild--Dora. 

He took to her with a passion which the trembling Isabella thoughta great deal too excessive to last. But though the natural Daddyvery soon reappeared, with all the aggravating peculiarities whichbelonged to him, the passion did last, and the truant strayed nomore. He set up a small printing business with the help of some oldcustomers--it was always characteristic of the man that, be hisfailings what they might, he never lacked friends--and withlecturing and writing, and Isabella's shop, they struggled onsomehow. Isabella's life was hard enough. Daddy was only good whenhe was happy; and at other times he dipped recklessly into viceswhich would have been the ruin of them all had they beenpersistent. But by some kind fate he always emerged, and more andmore, as years went on, owing to Dora. He drank, but nothopelessly; he gambled, but not past salvation; and there wasgenerally, as we have said, some friend at hand to pick the poorbesmirched featherbrain out of the mire. 

Dora grew up not unhappily. There were shifts and privations to putup with; there were stormy days when life seemed a hurricane ofwords and tears. But there were bright spaces in between, whenDaddy had good resolutions, or a little more money than usual; andwith every year the daughter instinctively knew that her spell overher father strengthened. She was on the whole a serious child, withfair pale hair, much given to straying in long loose ends about herprominent brow and round cheeks. Yet at the Baptist school, whithershe was sent, she was certainly popular. She had a passion for thelittle ones; and her grey-blue eyes, over which in general thefringed lids drooped too much, had a charming trick of suddensmiles, when the soft soul behind looked for an instant clearly andblithely out. At home she was a little round-shouldered drudge inher mother's service. At chapel she sat very patiently and happilyunder a droning minister, and when the inert and despondentIsabella would have let most of her religious duties drop, in theface of many troubles and a scoffing husband, the child of fourteengently and persistently held her to them. 

At last, however, when Dora was seventeen, Isabella died of cancer, and Daddy, who had been much shaken and terrified by her sufferingsin her last illness, fell for a while into an irritable melancholy, from which not even Dora could divert him. It was then that heseemed for the first time to cross the line which had hithertodivided him from ruin. The drinking at the White Horse, where theliterary circle met of which Lomax had been so long an ornament, had been of late going from bad to worse. The households of thewits concerned were up in arms; neighbourhood and police began toassert themselves. One night the trembling Dora waited hour afterhour for her father. About midnight he staggered in, maddened withdrink and fresh from a skirmish with the police. Finding her therewaiting for him, pale and silent, he did what he had never donebefore under any stress of trouble--struck and swore at her. Dorasank down with a groan, and in another minute Lomax was dashing hishead against the wall, vowing that he would beat his brains out. Inthe hours that followed, Dora's young soul was stretched as it wereon a rack, from which it rose, not weakened, but with new powersand a loftier stature. All her girlish levities and illusionsseemed to drop away from her. She saw her mission, and took hersqualid Oedipus in charge. 

Next morning she went to some of her father's friends, unknown toDaddy, and came back with a light in her blanched face, bearing theoffer of some work on a Radical paper at Leicester. Daddy, nowbroken and miserable, submitted, and off they went. 

At Leicester the change of moral and physical climate produced fora while a wonderful effect. Daddy found himself marvellously atease among the Secularist and Radical stockingers of the town, andsoon became well known to them as a being half butt, half oracle. Dora set herself to learn dressmaking, and did her best to like thenew place and the new people. It was at Leicester, a place seethingwith social experiment in its small provincial way, withsecularism, Owenism, anti-vaccination, and much else, that Lomaxfell a victim to one 'ism the more--to vegetarianism. It was therethat, during an editorial absence, and in the first fervour ofconversion, Daddy so belaboured a carnivorous world in the columnsof the 'Penny Banner' for which he worked, and so grotesquely andpersistently reduced all the problems of the time to terms ofnitrogen and albumen, that curt dismissal came upon him, and for atime Dora saw nothing but her precarious earnings between them andstarvation. It was then also that, by virtue of that queer charm hecould always exercise when he pleased, he laid hold on a youngRadical manufacturer and got out of him a loan of 200 pounds forthe establishment of a vegetarian restaurant wherein Leicester wasto be taught how to feed. 

But Leicester, alas! remained unregenerate. In the midst of Daddy'spreparations a commercial traveller, well known both to Manchesterand Leicester, repeated to him one day a remark of Purcell's, tothe effect that since Daddy's migration Manchester had been wellrid of a vagabond, and he, Purcell, of a family disgrace. Daddy, bursting with fatuous rage, and possessed besides of the wildestdreams of fortune on the strength of his 200 pounds, straightwaymade up his mind to return to Manchester, 'pull Purcell's nose, ' andplant himself and his prosperity that was to be in the bookseller'seyes. He broke in upon Dora at her work, and poured into herastonished ears a stream of talk, marked by a mad inventiveness, partly in the matter of vegetarian receipts, still more in that ofPurcell's future discomforts. When Daddy was once launched into asubject that suited him, he was inexhaustible. His phrases flowedfor ever; of words he was always sure. Like a certain French talker, 'his sentences were like cats: he showered them into air and theyfound their feet without trouble. '

Dora sat through it, bewildered and miserable. Go back toManchester where they had been so unhappy, where the White Horseand its crew were waiting for her father, simply to get into debtand incur final ruin for the sake of a mad fancy she humoured butcould not believe in, and a still madder thirst for personalvengeance on a man who was more than a match for anything Daddycould do! She was in despair. 

But Daddy was obdurate, brutal in his determination to have hisway; and when she angered him with her remonstrances, he turnedupon her with an irritable--

'I know what it is--damn it! It's that Puseyite gang you've taken upwith--you think of nothing but them. As if you couldn't find anticsand petticoats and priests in Manchester--they're everywhere--likeweeds. Wherever there's a dunghill of human credulity they swarm. '

Dora looked proudly at her father, as though disdaining to reply, gentle creature that she was; then she bent again over her work, and a couple of tears fell on the seam she was sewing. 

Aye, it was true enough. In leaving Leicester, after these twoyears, she was leaving what to her had been a spiritual birthplace, --tearing asunder a new and tender growth of the soul. 

This was how it had come about. 

On her first arrival in Leicester, in a _milieu_, that is tosay, where at the time 'Gavroche, ' as M. Renan calls him--thestreet philosopher who is no less certain and no more rational thanthe street preacher--reigned supreme, where her Secularist fatherand his associates, hot-headed and early representatives of a phaseof thought which has since then found much abler, though hardlyless virulent, expression in such a paper, say, as the 'NationalReformer, ' were for ever rending and trampling on all the currentreligious images and ideas, Dora shrank into herself more and more. She had always been a Baptist because her mother was. But in herdeep reaction against her father's associates, the chapel which shefrequented did not now satisfy her. She hungered for she knew notwhat, certain fastidious artistic instincts awakening the while inunexpected ways. 

Then one Easter Eve, as she came back from an errand into theoutskirts of the town, she passed a little iron church standing ina very poor neighbourhood, where, as she knew, a 'Puseyite' curatein charge officiated, and where a good many disturbances which hadexcited the populace had taken place. She went in. The curate, along, gaunt figure, of a familiar monkish type, was conducting'vespers' for the benefit of some twenty hearers, mostly women inblack. The little church was half decorated for Easter, though thealtar had still its Lenten bareness. Something in the ordering ofthe place, in its colours, its scents, in the voice of the priest, in the short address he delivered after the service, dwelling in atone of intimate emotion, the tone of the pastor to the souls heguides and knows, on the preparation needful for the EasterEucharist, struck home to Dora. Next day she was present at theEaster festival. Never had religion spoken so touchingly to herbefore as through these hymns, these flowers, this incense, thisEucharistic ceremonial wherein--being the midday celebration--thecongregation were merely hushed spectators of the most pathetic andimpressive act in the religious symbolism of mankind. In the darkcorner where she had hidden herself, Dora felt the throes of somenew birth within her. In six weeks from that time she had beenadmitted, after instruction, to the Anglican communion. 

Thenceforward another existence began for this child of EnglishDissent, in whom, however, some old Celtic leaven seems to havealways kept up a vague unrest, till the way of mystery and poetrywas found. 

Daddy--the infidel Daddy--stormed a good deal, and lamented himselfstill more, when these facts became known to him. Dora had become asuperstitious, priest-ridden dolt, of no good to him or anyone elseany more. What, indeed, was to become of him? Natural affectioncannot stand against the priest. A daughter cannot love her fatherand go to confession. Down with the abomination--_ecrasezl'infame!_

Dora smiled sadly and went her way. Against her sweet silenttenacity Daddy measured himself in vain. She would be a gooddaughter to him, but she would be a good churchwoman first. Hebegan to perceive in her that germ of detachment from thingsearthly and human which all ceremonialism produces, and in a suddenterror gave way and opposed her no more. Afterwards, in a curiousway, he came even to relish the change in her. The friends itbrought her, the dainty ordering of the little flower-deckedoratory she made for herself in one corner of her bare attic room, the sweet sobriety and refinement which her new loves andaspirations and self-denials brought with them into the house, touched the poetical instincts which were always dormant in thequeer old fellow, and besides flattered some strong and secretambitions which he cherished for his daughter. It appeared to himto have raised her socially, to have made a lady of her--thisjoining the Church. Well, the women must have some religious bag orother to run their heads into, and the Church bag perhaps was themost seemly. 

On the day of their return to Manchester, Daddy, sitting withcrossed arms and legs in a corner of the railway carriage, mighthave sat for a fairy-book illustration of Rumpelstiltzchen. His oldpeaked hat, which he had himself brought from the Tyrol, fellforward over his frowning brow, his cloak was caught fiercely abouthim, and, as the quickly-passing mill-towns began to give notice ofManchester as soon as the Derbyshire vales were left behind, hisglittering eyes disclosed an inward fever--a fever of contrivanceand of hate. He was determined to succeed, and equally determinedto make his success Purcell's annoyance. 

Dora sat opposite, with her bird-cage on her knee, looking sadweary. She had left behind, perhaps for ever, the dear friends whohad opened to her the way of holiness, and guided her first steps. Her eyes filled with tears of gratitude and emotion as she thoughtof them. 

Two things only were pleasant to remember. One was that the Churchembroidery she had begun in her young zeal at Leicester, using herodds and ends of time, to supplement the needs of a strugglingchurch depending entirely on voluntary contributions, was nowprobably to become her trade. For she had shown remarkable aptitudefor it; and she carried introductions to a large church-furnitureshop in Manchester which would almost certainly employ her. 

The other was the fact that somewhere in Manchester she had agirl-cousin--Lucy Purcell--who must be about sixteen. Purcell hadmarried after his migration to Half Street; his wife proved to bedelicate and died in a few years; this little girl was all that wasleft to him. Dora had only seen her once or twice in her life. Theenmity between Lomax and Purcell of course kept the families apart, and, after her mother's early death, Purcell sent his daughter to aboarding-school and so washed his hands of the trouble of herbringing up. But in spite of these barriers Dora well remembered aslim, long-armed schoolgirl, much dressed and becurled, who once ina by-street of Salford had run after her and, looking roundcarefully to see that no one was near, had thrust an eager faceinto hers and kissed her suddenly. 'Dora, --is your mother better? Iwish I could come and see you. Oh, it's horrid of people toquarrel! But I mustn't stay, --some one'll see, and I should justcatch it! Good-bye, Dora!' and so another kiss, very hasty andfrightened, but very welcome to the cheek it touched. 

As they neared Manchester, Dora, in her loneliness of soul, thoughtvery tenderly of Lucy--wondered how she had grown up, whether shewas pretty and many other things. She had certainly been a prettychild. Of course they must know each other and be friends. Doracould not let her father's feud come between her and her onlyrelation. Purcell might keep them apart; but she would show him shemeant no harm; and she would bring her father round--she would andmust. 

Two years had gone by. Of Daddy's two objects in leaving Leicester, one had so far succeeded better than any rational being would haveforeseen. 

On the first morning after their arrival he went out, giving Dorathe slip lest she might cramp him inconveniently in his decision;and came back radiant, having taken a deserted seed-shop in MarketPlace, which had a long, irregular addition at the back, formerly awarehouse, providentially suited, so Daddy declared, to thepurposes of a restaurant. The rent he had promised to give seemedto Dora a crime, considering their resources. The thought of it, the terror of the servants he was engaging, the knowledge of theridicule and blame with which their old friends regarded herfather's proceedings, these things kept the girl awake night afternight. 

But he would hear no remonstrances, putting all she had to sayaside with an arrogant boastfulness, which never failed. 

In they went. Dora set her teeth and did her best, keeping asjealous a watch on the purse-strings as she could, and furnishingtheir three rooms above the shop for as few shillings as might be, while Daddy was painting and decorating, composing _menus_, and ransacking recipes with the fever of an artist, now writingletters to the Manchester papers, or lecturing to audiences in theMechanics' Institute and the different working men's clubs, and nowplastering the shop-front with grotesque labels, or posing at hisown doorway and buttonholing the passers-by in the Tyrolesebrigand's costume which was his favourite garb. 

The thing took. There is a certain mixture of prophet andmountebank which can be generally counted upon to hit the popularfancy, and Daddy attained to it. Moreover, the moment wasfavourable. After the terrible strain of the cotton-famine and thehorrors of the cholera, Manchester was prosperous again. Trade wasbrisk, and the passage of the new Reform Bill had given a freshoutlet and impulse to the artisan mind which did but answer to thesocial and intellectual advance made by the working classes since'32. The huge town was growing fast, was seething with life, with ambitions, with all the passions and ingenuities thatbelong to gain and money-making and the race for success. Itwas pre-eminently a city of young men of all nationalities, three-fourths constantly engaged in the _chasse_ for money, according to their degrees--here for shillings, there forsovereigns, there for thousands. In such a _milieu_ any manhas a chance who offers to deal afresh on new terms with thosedaily needs which both goad and fetter the struggling multitude atevery step. Vegetarianism had, in fact, been spreading inManchester; one or two prominent workmen's papers were preachingit; and just before Daddy's advent there had been a great dinner ina public hall, where the speedy advent of a regenerate andfrugivorous mankind, with length of days in its right hand, and acaptivating abundance of small moneys in its waistcoat pocket, hadbeen freely and ardently prophesied. 

So Daddy for once seized the moment, and succeeded like the veriestPhilistine. On the opening day the restaurant was crowded frommorning till night. Dora, with her two cooks in the suffocatingkitchen behind, had to send out the pair of panting, perspiringkitchen-boys again and again for fresh supplies; while Daddy, athis wits' end for waiters, after haranguing a group of customers onthe philosophy of living, amid a tumult of mock cheers andlaughter, would rush in exasperated to Dora, to say that_never_ again would he trust her niggardly ways--she would bethe ruin of him with her economies. 

When at night the doors were shut at last on the noise and thecrowd, and Daddy sat, with his full cash-box open on his knee, while the solitary gaslight that remained threw a fantastic andcolossal shadow of him over the rough floor of the restaurant, Doracame up to him dropping with fatigue. He looked at her, his gauntface working, and burst into tears. 

'Dora, we never had any money before, not when--when--your motherwas alive. '

And she knew that by a strange reaction there had come suddenlyupon him the memory of those ghastly months when she and he throughthe long hours of every day had been forced--baffled andhelpless--to watch her mother's torture, and when the sordidstruggle for daily bread was at its worst, robbing death of all itsdignity, and pity of all its power to help. 

Do what she would, she could hardly get him to give up the moneyand go to bed. He was utterly unstrung, and his triumph for themoment lay bitter in the mouth. 

It was now two years since that opening day. During that time theParlour had become a centre after its sort--a scandal to some and adelight to others. The native youth got his porridge, and applepie, and baked potato there; but the place was also largely hauntedby the foreign clerks of Manchester. There was, for instance, acompany of young Frenchmen who lunched there habitually, and inwhose society the delighted Daddy caught echoes from thatunprejudiced life of Paris or Lyons, which had amazed andenlightened his youth. The place assumed a stamp and character. ToDaddy the development of his own popularity, which was like theemergence of a new gift, soon became a passion. He deliberately'ran' his own eccentricities as part of the business. Hence hisdress, his menus, his advertisements, and all the various anticswhich half regaled, half scandalised the neighbourhood. Doramarvelled and winced, and by dint of an habitual tolerance retainedthe power of stopping some occasional enormity. 

As to finances, they were not making their fortune; far from it;but to Dora's amazement, considering her own inexperience and herfather's flightiness, they had paid their way and something more. She was no born woman of business, as any professional accountantexamining her books might have discovered. But she had a passionatedetermination to defraud no one, and somehow, through much toil herconscience did the work. Meanwhile every month it astonished herfreshly that they two should be succeeding! Success was so littlein the tradition of their tattered and variegated lives. Could itlast? At the bottom of her mind lay a constant presentiment of newchange, founded no doubt on her knowledge of her father. 

But outwardly there was little to justify it. The craving for drinkseemed to have left him altogether--a not uncommon effect of thisparticular change of diet. And his hatred of Purcell, though initself it had proved quite unmanageable by all her arts, had donenobody much harm. In a society dependent on law and police thereare difficulties in the way of a man's dealing primitively with hisenemy. There had been one or two awkward meetings between the twoin the open street; and at the Parlour, among his specialintimates, Daddy had elaborated a Purcell myth of a Pecksniffiancharacter which his invention perpetually enriched. On the whole, however, it was in his liking for young Grieve, originally a casualcustomer at the restaurant, that Dora saw the chief effects of thefeud. He had taken the lad up eagerly as soon as he had discoveredboth his connection with Purcell and his daring rebellious temper;had backed him up in all his quarrels with his master; had takenhim to the Hall of Science, and introduced him to the speakersthere; and had generally paraded him as a secularist convert, snatched from the very jaws of the Baptist. 

And now!--now that David was in open opposition, attractingPurcell's customers, taking Purcell's water, Daddy was in a tumultof delight: wheeling off old books of his own, such as 'The Journalof Theology' and the 'British Controversialist, ' to fill up David'sstall, running down whenever business was slack to see how the ladwas getting on; and meanwhile advertising him with his usualextravagance among the frequenters of the Parlour. 

All through, however, or rather since Miss Purcell had returnedfrom school, Dora and her little cousin Lucy had been allowed tomeet. Lomax saw his daughter depart on her visits to Half Street, in silence; Purcell, when he first recognised her, hardly spoke toher. Dora believed, what was in fact the truth, that each regardedher as a means of keeping an eye on the other. She conveyedinformation from the hostile camp--therefore she was let alone. 

CHAPTER V

'Why--Lucy!'

Dora was still bending over her work when a well-known tap at thedoor startled her meditations. 

Lucy put her head in, and, finding Dora alone, came in with a lookof relief. Settling herself in a chair opposite Dora, she took offher hat, smoothed the coils of hair to which it had been pinned, unbuttoned the smart little jacket of pilot cloth, and threw backthe silk handkerchief inside; and all with a feverish haste andirritation as though everything she touched vexed her. 

'What's the matter, Lucy?' said Dora, after a little pause. At themoment of Lucy's entrance she had been absorbed in a measurement. 

'Nothing!' said Lucy quickly. 'Dora, you've got your hair loose!'

Dora put up her hand patiently. She was accustomed to be put torights. It was characteristic at once of her dreaminess and herpowers of self-discipline that she was fairly orderly, though shehad great difficulty in being so. Without a constant struggle, shewould have had loose plaits and hanging strings about her always. Lucy's trimness was a perpetual marvel to her. It was like thecontrast between the soft indeterminate lines of her charming faceand Lucy's small, sharply cut features. 

Lucy, still restless, began tormenting the feather in her hat. 

'When are you going to finish that, Dora?' she asked, noddingtowards the frame. 

'Oh it won't be very long now, ' said Dora, putting her head on oneside that she might take a general survey, at once loving andcritical, of her work. 

'You oughtn't to sit so close at it, ' said Lucy decidedly; 'you'llspoil your complexion. '

'I've none to spoil. '

'Oh, yes, you have, Dora--that's so silly of you. You aren't sallowa bit. It's pretty to be pale like that. Lots of people say so--notquite so pale as you are sometimes, perhaps--but I know why_that_ is, ' said Lucy, with a half-malicious emphasis. 

A slight pink rose in Dora's cheeks, but she bent over her frameand said nothing. 

'Does your clergyman _tell_ you to fast in Lent, Dora--whotells you?'

'The Church!' replied Dora, scandalised and looking up with brighteyes. 'I wish you understood things a little more, Lucy. '

'I can't, ' said Lucy, with a pettish sigh, 'and I don't caretwopence!'

She threw herself back in her rickety chair. Her arm dropped overthe side, and she lay staring at the ceiling. Dora went on with herwork in silence for a minute, and then looked up to see a teardropping from Lucy's cheek on to the horsehair covering of thechair. 

'Lucy, what _is_ the matter?--I knew there was somethingwrong!'

Lucy sat up and groped energetically for her handkerchief. 

'You wouldn't care, ' she said, her lips quivering--'nobody cares!'

And, sinking down again, she hid her face and fairly burst outsobbing. Dora, in alarm, pushed aside her frame and tried to caressand console her. But Lucy held her off, and in a second or two wasangrily drying her eyes. 

'Oh, you can't do any good, Dora--not the least good. It'sfather--you know well enough what it is--I shall never get on withfather if I live to be a hundred!'

'Well, you haven't had long to try in, ' said Dora, smiling. 

'Quite long enough to know, ' replied Lucy, drearily. 'I know I shallhave a horrid life--I must. Nobody can help it. Do you know we'vegot another shopman, Dora?'

The tone of childish scorn she threw into the question wasinimitable. Dora with difficulty kept from laughing. 

'Well, what's he like?' '_Like?_ He's like--like nothing, 'said Lucy, whose vocabulary was not extensive. 'He's fat andugly--wears spectacles. Father says he's a treasure--to me--andthen when they're in the shop I hear him going on at him likeanything for being a stupid. And I have to give the creature teawhen father's away, to clear up after him as though he were aschool-child. And father gets in a regular passion if I ask himabout the dance and there's a missionary tea next week, and he'smade me take a table--and he wants me to teach in SundaySchool--and the minister's wife has been talking to him about mydress--and--and--No, I _can't_ stand it, Dora--I can't and Iwon't!'

And Lucy, gulping down fresh tears, sat intensely upright, andlooked frowningly at Dora as though defying her to take the matterlightly. 

Dora was perplexed. Deep in her dove-like soul lay the fiercestviews about Dissent--that rent in the seamless vesture of Christ, as she had learnt to consider it. Her mother had been a Baptisttill her death, she herself till she was grown up. But now shehad all the zeal--nay, even the rancour--of the convert. Itwas one of her inmost griefs that her own change had not comeearlier--before her mother's death. Then perhaps her mother, herpoor--poor--mother, might have changed with her. It went againsther to urge Lucy to make herself a good Baptist. 

'It's no wonder Uncle Tom wants you to do what he likes, ' she saidslowly. 'But if you don't take the chapel, Lucy--if you wantsomething different, perhaps--'

'Oh, I don't want any _church_, thank you. ' cried Lucy, up inarms. 'I don't want _anybody_ ordering me about. Why can't I gomy own way a bit, and amuse myself as I please? It is _too_, too bad!'

Dora did not know what more to say. She went on with her work, thinking about it all. Suddenly Lucy astonished her by a questionin another voice. 

'Have you seen Mr. Grieve's shop, Dora?'

Dora looked up. 

'No. Father's been there a good many times. He says it's capitalfor a beginning and he's sure to get on fast. There's one or twovery good sort of customers been coming lately. There's the Earl ofDriffield, I think it is--don't you remember, Lucy, it was he gavethat lecture with the magic lantern at the Institute you and I wentto last summer. He's a queer sort of gentleman. Well, he's beencoming several times and giving orders. And there's some of thecollege gentlemen; oh, and a lot of others. They all seem to thinkhe's so clever, father says--'

'I know the Earl of Driffield quite well, ' said Lucy loftily, 'Heused to be always coming to our place, and I've tied up his booksfor him sometimes. I don't see what's good of being an earl--not togo about like that. And father says he's got a grand place nearStalybridge too. Well, if _he's_ gone to Mr. Grieve, father'llbe just mad. ' Lucy pursed up her small mouth with energy. Doraevaded the subject. 

'He says when he's quite settled, ' she resumed presently, 'we're togo and have supper with him for a house-warming. '

Lucy looked ready to cry again. 

'He couldn't ask me--of course he couldn't, ' she said, indistinctly. 'Dora--Dora!'

'Well? Oh, don't mix up my silks, Lucy; I shall never get themright again. '

Lucy reluctantly put them down. 

'Do you think, Dora, Mr. Grieve cares anything at all about me?'she said at last, hurrying out the words, and looking Dora in theface, very red and bold. 

Dora laughed outright. 

'I knew you were going to ask that!' she said. 'Perhaps I've beenasking myself!'

Lucy said nothing, but the tears dropped again down her cheeks andon to her small quivering hands--all the woman awake in her. 

Dora pushed her frame away, and put her arm round her cousin, quiteat a loss what to say for the best. 

Another woman would have told Lucy plumply that she was a littlefool; that in the first place young Grieve had never shown anysigns of making love to her at all; and that, in the second, if hehad, her father would never let her marry him without a strugglewhich nobody could suppose Lucy capable of waging with a man likePurcell. It was all a silly fancy, the whim of a green girl, whichwould make her miserable for nothing. Mrs. Alderman Head, forinstance, Dora's chaperon for the Institute dance, the sensible, sharp-tongued wife of a wholesale stationer in Market Street, wouldcertainly have taken this view of the matter, and communicated itto Lucy with no more demur than if you had asked her, say, for heropinion on the proper season for bottling gooseberries. But Dora, whose inmost being was one tremulous surge of feeling and emotion, could not approach any matter of love and marriage without athrill, without a sense of tragedy almost. Besides, like Lucy, shewas very young still--just twenty--and youth answers to youth. 

'You know Uncle Tom wouldn't like it a bit, Lucy, ' she began in herperplexity. 

'I don't care!' cried Lucy, passionately. 'Girls can't marry toplease their fathers. I should have to wait, I suppose. I would getmy own way somehow. But what's the good of talking about it, Dora?I'm sick of thinking about it--sick of everything. He'll marrysomebody else--I know he will--and I shall break my heart, or--'

'Marry somebody else, too, ' suggested Dora slyly. 

Lucy drew herself angrily away, and had to be soothed intoforgiving her cousin. The child had, in fact, thought and worriedherself by now into such a sincere belief in her own passion, thatthere was nothing for it but to take it seriously. Dora yieldedherself to Lucy's tears and her own tenderness. She sat pondering. 

Then, suddenly, she said something very different from what Lucyexpected her to say. 

'Oh! if I could get him to go and talk to Father Russell! He's sowonderful with young men. '

Her hand dropped on to her knee; she looked away from Lucy out ofthe window, her sweet face one longing. 

Lucy was startled, and somewhat annoyed. In her disgust with herfather and her anxiety to attract David's notice, she had soentirely forgotten his religious delinquencies, that it seemedfussy and intrusive on Dora's part to make so much of them. Sheinstinctively resented, too, what sounded to her like a tone ofproprietary interest. It was not Dora that was his friend--it wasshe!

'I don't see what you have to do with his opinions, Dora, ' she saidstiffly; 'he isn't rude to you now as he used to be. Young men arealways wild a bit at first. '

And she tossed her head with all the worldly wisdom of seventeen. 

Dora sighed and was silent. She fell to her work again, while Lucywandered restlessly about the room. Presently the child stoppedshort. 

'Oh! look here, Dora--'

'Yes. '

'Do come round with me and look at some spring patterns I've got. You might just as well. I know you've been slaving your eyes out, and it's a nice day. '

Dora hesitated, but finally consented. She had been at work formany hours in hot rooms, and meant to work a good many more yetbefore night. A break would revive her, and there was ample timebefore the three o'clock dinner which she and her father tooktogether after the midday rush of the restaurant was over. So sheput on her things. 

On their way Dora looked into the kitchen. Everything was in fullwork. A stout, red-faced woman was distributing and superintending. On the long charcoal stove which Daddy under old Barbier's advicehad just put up, on the hot plates near, and the glowing range inthe background, innumerable pans were simmering and steaming. Herewas a table covered with stewed fruits; there another laden withround vegetable pies just out of the oven--while a heap of tomatoeson a third lent their scarlet to the busy picture. Some rays ofwintry sun had slipped in through the high windows, and werecontending with the steam of the pies and the smoke from thecooking. And in front of all on an upturned box sat a pair ofLancashire lasses, peeling apples at lightning speed, yet not sofast but they could laugh and chat the while, their bright eyeswandering perpetually through the open serving hatches which ranalong one side of the room, to the restaurant stretching beyond, with its rows of well-filled tables and its passing waitresses intheir white caps and aprons. 

Dora slipped in among them in her soft deprecating way, smiling atthis one and that till she came to the stout cook. There shestopped and asked something. Lucy, standing at the door, saw thehuge woman draw a corner of her apron across her eyes. 

'What did you want, Dora?' she inquired as her cousin rejoined her. 

'It's her poor boy. He's in the Infirmary and very bad. I'm surethey think he's dying. I wanted to send her there this morning anddo her work, but she wouldn't go. There's no more news--but wemustn't be long. '

She walked on, evidently thinking with a tender absorption of themother and son, while Lucy was conscious of her usual impatiencewith all this endless concern for unknown people, which stood somuch in the way of Dora's giving her full mind to her cousin'saffairs. 

Yet, as she knew well, Sarah, the stout cook, had been the chiefprop of the Parlour ever since it opened. No other servant hadstayed long with Daddy. He was too fantastic and exacting a master. She had stayed--for Dora's sake--and, from bearing with him, hadlearnt to manage him. When she came she brought with her a sickly, overgrown lad, the only son of her widowhood, to act askitchen-boy. He did his poor best for a while, his mother in truthgetting through most of his work as well as her own, while Dora, who had the weakness for doctoring inherent in all good, women, stuffed him with cod-liver oil and 'strengthening mixtures. ' Thensymptoms of acute hip-disease showed themselves, and the lad wasadmitted to the big Infirmary in Piccadilly. There he had lain forsome six or eight weeks now, toiling no more, fretting no more, living on his mother's and Dora's visits, and quietly loosening onelife-tendril after another. During all this time Dora had thoughtof him, prayed for him, taught him--the wasted, piteous creature. 

When they arrived at Half Street, they let themselves in by theside-door, and Lucy hurried her cousin into the parlour that theremight be no meeting with her father, with whom she was on decidedlyuncomfortable terms. 

The table in the parlour was strewn with patterns from severalLondon shops. To send for them, examine them, and imagine what theywould look like when made up was now Lucy's chief occupation. Towhich might be added a little strumming on the piano, a littlevisiting--not much, for she hated most of her father's friends, andwas at present too closely taken up with self-pity and speculationsas to what David Grieve might be doing to make new ones--and agreat deal of ordering about of Mary Ann. 

Dora sat down, and Lucy pounced on one pattern after another, folding them between her fingers and explaining eagerly how this orthat would look if it were cut so, or trimmed so. 'Oh, Dora, look--this pink gingham with white spots! Don't you think it's alove? And, you know, pink always suits me, except when it's ablue-pink. But you don't call that a blue-pink, do you? And yet itisn't salmon, certainly--it's something between. It _ought_ tosuit me, but I declare--' and suddenly, to Dora's dismay, thechild flung down the patterns she held with a passionatevehemence--'I declare nothing seems to suit me now! Dora!'--ina tone of despair--'_Dora!_ don't you think I'm going off? Mycomplexion's all dull, and--and--why I might be thirty!' andrunning over to the glass, draped in green cut-paper, which adornedthe mantelpiece, Lucy stood before it examining herself in anagony. And, indeed, there was a change. A touch of some witheringblight seemed to have swept across the whole dainty face, and takenthe dewy freshness from the eyes. There was fever in it--the feverof fret and mutiny and of a starved self-love. 

Dora looked at her cousin with less patience than usual--perhapsbecause of the inevitable contrast between Lucy's posings and thetrue heartaches of the world. 

'Lucy, what nonsense! You're just a bit worried, and you make sucha lot of it. Why can't you be patient?'

'Because I can't!' said Lucy, sombrely, dropping into a chair, andletting her arm fall over the back. 'It's all very well, Dora. Youaren't in love with a man whom you never see, and whom your fatherhas a spite on! And you won't do anything to help me--you won'tmove a finger. And, of _course, _ you might!'

'What could I do, Lucy?' cried Dora, exasperated. 'I can't go andask young Grieve to marry you. I do wish you'd try and put him outof your head, that I do. You're too young, and he's got hisbusiness to think about. And while Uncle Tom's like this, I can'tbe always putting myself forward to help you meet him. It would bejust the way to make him think something bad--to make himsuspect--'

'Well, and why shouldn't he suspect?' said Lucy, obstinately, herlittle mouth set and hard; 'it's all rubbish about girls leaving itall to the men. If a girl doesn't show she cares about a man, how'she to know--and when she don't meet him--and when her father keepsher shut up--_shameful!'_

She flung the word out through her small, shut teeth, the browsmeeting over her flashing eyes. 

'Oh! it's shameful, is it--eh, Miss Purcell?' said a harsh, mimicking voice coming from the dark passage leading into the shop. 

Lucy sprang up in terror. There on the steps stood her father, bigger, blacker, more formidable than he had ever been in the eyesof the two startled girls. All unknown to them, the two doors whichparted them from the shop had been slightly ajar, and Purcell, catching their voices as they came in, and already on the watch forhis daughter, had maintained a treacherous quiet behind them. Nowhe was entirely in his element. He surveyed them both with a dark, contemptuous triumph. What fools women were to be sure!

As he descended the two steps into the parlour the floor shookunder his heavy tread. Dora had instinctively thrown her arm roundLucy, who had begun to cry hysterically. She herself was very pale, but after the first start she looked her uncle in the face. 

'Is it you that's been teaching Lucy these _beautiful_sentiments?' said Purcell, with ironical emphasis, stopping a yardfrom them and pointing at Dora, 'and do you get 'em from St. Damian's?'

Dora threw up her head, and flushed. 'I get nothing from St. Damian's that I'm ashamed of, ' she said in a proud voice, 'and I'vedone nothing with Lucy that I'm ashamed of. '

'No, I suppose not, ' said Purcell dryly; 'the devil don't deal muchin shame. It's a losing article. '

Then he looked at Lucy, and his expression suddenly changed. Theflame beneath leapt to sight. He caught her arm, dragged her out ofDora's hold, and shook her as one might shake a kitten. 

'Who were you talking of just now?' he said to her, holding her byboth shoulders, his eyes blazing down upon her. 

Lucy was much too frightened to speak. She stood staring back athim, her breast heaving violently. 

Dora came forward in indignation. 

'You'll get nothing out of her if you treat her like that, ' shesaid, with spirit, 'nor out of me either. '

Purcell recovered himself with difficulty. He let Lucy go, andwalking up to the mantelpiece stood there, leaning his arm upon it, and looking at the girls from under his hand. 

'What do I want to get out of you?' he said, with scorn. 'As if Ididn't know already everything that's in your silly minds! Iguessed already, and now that you have been so obliging as to letyour secrets out under my very nose--I _know!_ That chitthere'--he pointed to Lucy--all his gestures had a certaintheatrical force and exaggeration, springing, perhaps, from hishabit of lay preaching--'imagines she going to marry the younginfidel I gave the sack to a while ago. Now don't she? Are yougoing to say no to that?'

His loud challenge pushed Dora to extremities, and it was all leftto her. Lucy was sobbing on the sofa. 

'I don't know what she imagines, ' said Dora, slowly, seeking invain for words; the whole situation was so ridiculous. 'Are yougoing to prevent her falling in love with the man she chooses?'

'_Certainly!_' said Purcell, with mocking emphasis. 'Certainly--since she chooses wrong. The only concern of the godlyin these matters is to see that their children are not yoked withunbelievers. Whenever I see that young reprobate in the street now, I smell _the pit_. And it'll not be long before the Lordtumbles him into it; there's an end comes to such devil's fry asthat. Oh, they may prosper and thrive, they may revile the childrenof the Lord, they may lift up the hoof against the poor Christian, but the time comes--_the time comes. _'

His solemnity, at once unctuous and full of vicious meaning, onlyirritated Dora. But Lucy raised herself from the sofa, and lookedsuddenly round at her father. Her eyes were streaming, her hair indisorder, but there was a suspicion and intelligence in her lookwhich seemed to give her back self-control. She watched eagerly forwhat her father might say or do next. 

As soon as he saw her sitting up he walked over to her and took heragain by the shoulder. 

'Now look here, ' he said to her, holding her tight, 'let's finishwith this. That young man's the Lord's enemy--he's my enemy--andI'll teach him a lesson before I've done. But that's neither herenor there. You understand this. If you ever walk out of this doorwith him, you'll not walk back into it, with him or without him. I'd have done with you, and _my money_'ld have done with you. But there'--and Purcell gave a little scornful laugh, and let hergo with a push--'_he_ don't care twopence about you--I'll saythat for him. '

Lucy flushed fiercely, and getting up began mechanically to smoothher hair before the glass, with wild tremulous movements, will anddefiance settling on her lip, as she looked at herself and at thereflection of her father. 

'And as for you, Miss Lomax, ' said Purcell deliberately, standingopposite Dora, 'you've been aiding and abetting somehow--I don'tcare how. I don't complain. There was nothing better to be expectedof a girl with your parentage and bringing up, and a Puseyite intothe bargain. But I warn you you'll go meddling here once too oftenbefore you've done. If you'll take my advice you'll let otherpeople's business alone, and _mind your own_. Them that havegot Adrian Lomax on their hands needn't go poaching on theirneighbours for something to do. '

He spoke with a slow, vindictive emphasis, and Dora shrank andquivered as though he had struck her. Then by a great effort--theeffort of one who had not gone through a close and tender trainingof the soul for nothing--she put from her both her anger and herfear. 

'You're cruel to father, ' she said, her voice fluttering; 'you mightbe thinking sometimes how straight he's kept since he took theParlour. And I don't believe young Grieve means any harm to you oranybody--and I'm sure I don't. '

A sob rose in her throat. Anybody less crassly armoured inself-love than Purcell must have been touched. As for him, heturned on his heel. 

'I'll protect myself, thank you, ' he said dryly;' and I'll judgefor myself. You can do as you like, and Lucy too, so long as shetakes the consequences. Do you understand, Lucy?'

'Yes, ' said Lucy, facing round upon him, all tremulous passion andrebellion, but she could not meet his fixed, tyrannical eye. Herown wavered and sank. Purcell enjoyed the spectacle of her for asecond or two, smiled, and went. 

As soon as he was gone, Lucy dragged her cousin to the stairs, andnever let her go till Dora was safe in her room and the doorbolted. 

Dora implored to be released. How could she stay in her uncle'shouse after such a scene? and she must get home quickly anyway, asLucy knew. 

Lucy took no notice at all of what she was saying. 

'Look here. ' she said, breaking into the middle of Dora's appeal, and speaking in an excited whisper--'he's going to do him amischief. I'm certain he is. That's how he looks when he's going topay some one out. Now, what's he going to do? I'll knowsomehow--trust me!'

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her arms behind her, supporting her, her little feet beating each other restlessly--ahot, vindictive anger speaking from every feature, every movement. The pretty chit of seventeen seemed to have disappeared. Here wasevery promise of a wilful and obstinate woman, with more of herfather's stuff in her than anyone could have yet surmised. 

A pang rose in Dora. She rose impulsively, and throwing herselfdown by Lucy, drew the ruffled, palpitating creature into her arms. 

'Oh, Lucy, isn't it only because you're angry and vexed, andbecause you want to fight Uncle Purcell? Oh, don't go on just forthat! When we're--we're Christians, we mustn't want our own way--wemust give it up--_we must give it up. _' Her voice sank in aburst of tears, and she drooped her head on Lucy's, kissing hercousin's brown hair. 

Lucy extricated herself with a movement of impatience. 

'When one _loves_ anybody, ' she said, sitting very upright andtwisting her fingers together, 'one must stick to him!'

Dora started at the word 'love. ' It seemed to her a profanation. She dried her eyes, and got up to go without another word. 

'Well, Dora, ' said Lucy, frowning, 'and so you'll do nothing forme--_nothing_?'

Dora stood a moment in a troubled silence. Then she turned, andtook gentle hold of her cousin. 

'If I get a chance, Lucy, I'll try and find out whether he'sthinking of marrying at all. And if he isn't--and I'm sure heisn't--will you give it all up, and try and live comfortable withUncle Purcell, and think of something else?'

Her eyes had a tender, nay a passionate entreaty in them. 

'No!' said Lucy with energy; 'but I'll very likely drown myself inthe river some fine night. '

Dora still held her, standing above her, and looking down at her, trying hard to read her true mind. Lucy bore it defiantly for aminute; then suddenly two large tears rose. A quiver passed overDora's face; she kissed her cousin quickly, and went towards thedoor. 

'And I'll find out what father's going to do, or my name isn't whatit is!' said the girl behind her, in a shrill, shaking voice, asshe closed the door. 

 * * * * *

Dora ran back to Market Place, filled with a presentiment that shewas late, though the hand of the Cathedral clock was still far fromthree. 

At the side door stood a woman with a shawl over her head, lookingdistractedly up the street. 

'Oh, Miss Dora! Miss Dora! they've sent. He's gooin--gooin quick. An' he keeps wearyin' for "mither an' Miss Dora. "'

The powerful scarred face had the tremulous helplessness of grief. Dora took her by the arm. 

'Let us run, Sarah--at once. Oh, never mind the work!'

The two women hurried through the crowded Saturday streets. Buthalfway up Market Street Sarah stopped short, looking round her inan agony. 

'Theer's his feyther, Miss Dora. Oh, he wor a bad 'un to me, but hehad allus a soft spot for t' lad. I'd be reet glad to send worrud. He wor theer in the ward, they tell't me, last week. '

Three years before she had separated from her husband, a sawyer, bymutual consent. He was younger than she, and he had been grosslyunfaithful to her; she came of a good country stock and herdaleswoman's self-respect could put up with him no longer. But shehad once been passionately in love with him, and, as she said, hehad been on the whole kind to the boy. 

'Where is he?' said Dora. 

'At Mr. Whitelaw's yard, Edgell Street, Great Ancoats. '

They had just entered the broad Infirmary Square. Dora, lookinground her in perplexity, suddenly saw coming towards them the tallfigure of David Grieve. The leap of the heart of which she wasconscious through all her preoccupation startled her. But she wentup to him without a moment's hesitation. David, swinging along asthough Manchester belonged to him, found himself arrested and, looking down, saw Dora's pale and agitated face. 

'Mr. Grieve, will you help me?'

She drew him to the side and explained as quickly as she could. Sarah stood by, and threw in directions. 

'He'll be to be found at Mr. Whitelaw's yard--Edgell Street--an'whoever goos mun just say to him, "Sarah says to tha--Wilt thacoom, or wilt tha not coom?--t' lad's deein. "'

She threw out the words with a sombre simplicity and force, then, her whole frame quivering with impatience, she crossed the road tothe Infirmary without waiting for Dora. 

'Can you send some one?' said Dora. 

'I will go myself at once. I'll find the man if he's there, andbring him. You leave it to me. '

He turned without more ado, broke into a run, and disappeared roundthe corner of Oldham Street. 

Dora crossed to the Infirmary, her mind strangely divided for amoment between the solemn image of what was coming, and thevibrating memory of something just past. 

But, once in the great ward, pity and death possessed her wholly. He knew them, the poor lad--made, as it seemed, two tremulousmovements, --once, when his mother's uncontrollable crying passedinto his failing ear--once when Dora's kiss was laid upon hishollow temple. Then again he lay unconscious, drawing gently to theend. 

Dora knelt beside him praying, his mother on the other side, andthe time passed. Then there were sounds about the bed, and lookingup, Dora saw two figures approaching. In front was a middle-agedman, with a stupid, drink-stained face. He came awkwardly andunsteadily up to the bedside, almost stumbling over his wife, andlaying his hand on the back of a chair to support himself. Hebrought with him an overpowering smell of beer, and Dora thought asshe looked at him that he had only a very vague idea of what wasgoing on. His wife took no notice of him whatever. 

Behind at some little distance, his hat in his hand, stood DavidGrieve. Why did he stay? Dora could not get him out of her mind. Even in her praying she still saw the dark, handsome head and lithefigure thrown out against the whiteness of the hospital walls. 

There was a slight movement in the bed, and the nurse, standingbeside the boy, looked up and made a quick sign to the mother. Whatshe and Dora saw was only a gesture as of one settling for sleep. Without struggle and without fear, the little lad who had neverlived enough to know the cost of dying, went the way of all flesh. 

'They die so easily, this sort, ' said the nurse to Dora, as shetenderly closed the patient eyes; 'it's like a plant that's neverrooted. '

 * * * * *

A few minutes later Dora was blindly descending the long stairs. The mother was still beside her dead, making arrangements for theburial. The father, sobered and conscious, had already slouchedaway. But at the foot of the stairs Dora, looking round, saw thatDavid was just behind her. 

He came out with her. 

'He was drunk when I found him, ' he explained, 'he had been drinkingin the dinner hour. I had him by the arm all the way, and thought Ihad best bring him straight in. And then--I had never seen anyonedie, ' he said simply, a curious light in his black eyes. 

Dora, still choked with tears, could not speak. With shaking handsshe searched for a bit of veil she had with her to hide her eyesand cheeks. But she could not find it. 

'Don't go down Market Street, ' he said, after a shy look at her. 'Come this way, there isn't such a crowd. '

And turning down Mosley Street, all the way he guided her throughsome side streets where there were fewer people to stare. Suchforethought, such gentleness in him were quite new to her. Shegradually recovered herself, feeling all the while this youngsympathetic presence at her side--dreading lest it should deserther. 

He meanwhile was still under the tremor and awe of the newexperience. So this was dying! He remembered 'Lias holdingMargaret's hand. _'Deein's long--but it's varra, varra peaceful. '_ Not always, surely! There must be vigorous, tenacious soulsthat went out with tempests and agonies; and he was conscious of apang of fear, feeling himself so young and strong. 

Presently he led her into St. Ann's Square, and then they shookhands. He hurried off to his business, and she remained standing amoment on the pavement outside the church which makes one side ofthe square. An impulse seized her--she turned and went into thechurch instead of going home. 

There, in one of the old oak pews where the little tarnished platesstill set forth the names of their eighteenth-century owners, shefell on her knees and wrestled with herself and God. 

She was very simple, very ignorant, but religion, as religion can, had dignified and refined all the elements of character. She saidto herself in an agony--that he _must_ love her--that she hadloved him in truth all along. And then a great remorse came uponher--the spiritual glory she had just passed through closed roundher again. What! she could see the heaven opened--the Good Shepherdstoop to take his own--and then come away to feel nothing but thisselfish, passionate craving? Oh, she was ashamed, she loathedherself!

_Lucy!_--Lucy had no claim! should have no claim! He did notcare for her. 

Then again the pale dead face would flash upon her with itssubmissive look, --so much gratitude for so little, and such atender ease in dying! And she possessed by all these bad andjealous feelings, these angry desires, fresh from such a presence!

_'Oh! Lamb of God--Lamb of God--that takest away the sins of theworld!'_

CHAPTER VI

And David, meanwhile, was thinking of nothing in the world but thefortunes of a little shop, about twelve feet square, and of thestall outside that shop. The situation--for a hero--is certainlyone of the flattest conceivable. Nevertheless it has to be faced. If, however, one were to say that he had marked none of LucyPurcell's advances, that would be to deny him eyes as well assusceptibilities. He had, indeed, said to himself in a lordly waythat Lucy Purcell was a regular little flirt, and was beginningthose ways early. But a certain rough young modesty, joined with asense of humour at his own expense, prevented him from making anymore of it, and he was no sooner in his own den watching forcustomers than Lucy vanished from his mind altogether. He thoughtmuch more of Purcell himself, with much vengeful chuckling andspeculation. 

As for Dora, he had certainly begun to regard her as a friend. Shehad sense and experience, in spite of her Ritualism, whereas Lucyin his eyes had neither. So that to run into the Parlour, aftereach new day was over, and discuss with Daddy and her the ups anddowns, the fresh chances and prospects of his infant business, waspleasant enough. Daddy and he met on the common ground of wishingto make the world uncomfortable for Purcell; while Dora suppliedthe admiring uncritical wonder, in which, like a warm environment, an eager temperament expands, and feels itself under the stimulusmore inventive and more capable than before. 

But marrying! The lad's careless good-humoured laugh under Ancrum'sprobings was evidence enough of how the land lay. Probably at thebottom of him, if he had examined, there lay the instinctiveassumption that Dora was one of the girls who are not likely tomarry. Men want them for sisters, daughters, friends--and then goand fall in love with some minx that has a way with her. 

Besides, who could be bothered with 'gells, ' when there was a stallto be set out and a career to be made? With that stall, indeed, David was truly in love. How he fingered and meddled with it!--setting out the cheap reprints it contained so as to show theirfrontispieces, and strewing among them, in an artful disorder, afew rare local pamphlets, on which he kept a careful watch, eitherfrom the door or from inside. Behind these, again, within theglass, was a precious shelf, containing in the middle of it about adozen volumes of a kind dear to a collector's eye--thin volumes inshabby boards, then just beginning to be sought after--the firsteditions of nineteenth-century poets. For months past David hadbeen hoarding up a few in a corner of his little lodging, and onhis opening day they decoyed him in at least five inquiring souls, all of whom stayed to talk a bit. There was a 'Queen Mab;' and a'Lyrical Ballads;' an 'Endymion;' a few Landors thrown in, and a'Bride of Abydos'--this last not of much account, for its authorhad the indiscretion, from the collector's point of view, to befamous from the beginning, and so to flood the world with largeeditions. 

Round and about these dainty morsels were built in withsolid rubbish, with Daddy's 'Journals of Theology, ' 'BritishControversialist, ' and the rest. In one top corner lurked a fewbattered and cut-down Elzevirs, of no value save to the sentimentof the window, while a good many spaces were filled up with somenew and attractive editions of standard books just out ofcopyright, contributed, these last, by the enterprising travellerof a popular firm, from whom David had them on commission. 

Inside, the shop was of the roughest: a plank or two on a couple oftrestles served for a counter, and two deal shelves, put up byDavid, ran along the wall behind. The counter held a few Frenchscientific books, very fresh, and 'in the movement, ' the result ofcertain inquiries put by old Barbier to a school friend of his, nowprofessor at the Sorbonne--meant to catch the 'college people;'while on the other side lay some local histories of neighbouringtowns and districts, a sort of commodity always in demand in agreat expanding city, where new men have risen rapidly and familiesare in the making. For these local books the lad had developed anastonishing _flair_. He had the geographical and also thesocial instincts which the pursuit of them demands. 

On his first day David netted in all a profit of seventeenshillings and twopence, and at night he curled himself up on amattress in the little back kitchen, with an old rug for coveringand a bit of fire, and slept the sleep of liberty. 

In a few days more several of the old-established book-buyers ofthe town, a more numerous body, perhaps, in Manchester than inother northern centres, had found him out; a certain portly andwealthy lady, connected with one of the old calico-printingfamilies, a person of character, who made a hobby of LancashireNonconformity, had walked into the shop, and given the boyish ownerof it much good advice and a few orders; the Earl of Driffield hadlooked in, and, caught by the lures of the stall, customers hadcome from the most unlikely quarters, desiring the mostheterogeneous wares. The handsome, intelligent young fellow, withhis out-of-the-way strains of knowledge, with his frankself-conceit and his equally frank ignorance, caught the fancy ofthose who stayed to talk with him. A certain number of persons hadbeen already taken with him in Purcell's shop, and were now vastlyamused by the lad's daring and the ambitious range of his firststock. 

As for Lord Driffield, on the first occasion when he had dropped inhe had sat for an hour at least, talking and smoking cigarettesacross David's primitive counter. 

This remarkable person, of whom Lucy thought so little, was wellknown, and had been well known, for a good many years, to thebooksellers of Manchester and Liverpool. As soon as the autumnshooting season began, Purcell, for instance, remembered LordDriffield, and began to put certain books aside for him. Hepossessed one of the famous libraries of England, and he not onlyowned but read. Scholars all over Europe took toll both of hisbooks and his brains. He lived to collect and to be consulted. There was almost nothing he did not know, except how to make a bookfor himself. He was so learned that he had, so to speak, workedthrough to an extreme modesty. His friends, however, found nothingin life so misleading as Lord Driffield's diffidence. 

At the same time Providence had laid upon him a vast family estate, and an aristocratic wife, married in his extreme youth to pleasehis father. Lady Driffield had the ideas of her caste, and whenthey came to their great house near Stalybridge, in the autumn, sheinsisted on a succession of proper guests, who would shoot thegrouse in a proper manner, and amuse her in the evenings. For, asshe had no children, life was often monotonous, and when she wasbored she had a stately way of making herself disagreeable to LordDriffield. He therefore did his best to content her. He receivedher guests, dined with them in the evenings, and despatched them tothe moors in the morning. But between those two functions he washis own master; and on the sloppy November afternoons he mightas often as not be seen trailing about Manchester or Liverpool, carrying his slouching shoulders and fair spectacled faceinto every bookseller's shop, good, bad, and indifferent, orgiving lectures, mostly of a geographical kind, at popularinstitutions--an occupation in which he was not particularlyeffective. 

David had served him, once or twice, in Half Street, and had sent aspecial notice of his start and his intentions to Benet's Park, theDriffields' 'place. ' Lord Driffield's first visit left himquivering with excitement, for the earl had a way of behaving asthough everybody else were not only his social, but hisintellectual equal--even a lad of twenty, with his business tolearn. He would sit pleasantly smoking and asking questions--abenevolent, shabby person, eager to be informed. Then, when Davidhad fallen into the trap, and was holding forth--proud, it mightbe, of certain bits of knowledge which no one else in Manchesterpossessed--Lord Driffield would throw in a gentle comment, and thenanother and another, till the trickle became a stream, and theyoung man would fall blankly listening, his mouth opening wider andwider. When it was over, and the earl, with his draggled umbrella, his disappeared, David sat, crouched on his wooden stool, consumedwith hot ambition and wonder. How could a man know so much--and anearl, who didn't want it? For a few hours, at any rate, hisself-conceit was dashed. He realised dimly what it might be to knowas the scholar knows. And that night, when he had shut theshutters, he vowed to himself, as he gathered his books about him, that five hours was enough sleep for a strong man; that_learn_ he must and should, and that some day or other hewould hold his own, even with Lord Driffield. 

How he loved his evenings--the paraffin lamp glaring beside him, the crackling of the coal in his own fire, the book on his knee!Ancrum had kept his promise, and was helping him with his Greek;but his teaching hardly kept pace with the boy's enthusiasmand capacity. The _voracity_ with which he worked at hisThucydides and Homer left the lame minister staring and sighing. The sound of the lines, the roll of the _oi_'s and _ou_'swas in David's ear all day, and to learn a dozen irregular verbs inthe interval between two customers was like the gulping of adainty. 

Meanwhile, as he collected his English poets he read them. Andhere was a whole new world. For in his occupation with theEncyclopaedists he had cared little for poetry. The reactionagainst his Methodist fit had lasted long, had developed a certaincontempt for sentiment, a certain love for all sharp, dry, calculable things, and for the tone of _irony_ in particular. But in such a nature such a phase was sure to pass, and it waspassing. Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson--now he was makingacquaintance piecemeal with them all, as the precious volumesturned up, which he was soon able to place with a precision whichtore them too soon out of his hands. The Voltairean temper in himwas melting, was passing into something warmer, subtler, and morerestless. 

But he was not conscious of it. He was as secular, as cocksure, asirritating as ever, when Ancrum probed him on the subject of theHall of Science or the various Secularist publications which hesupported. 

'Do you call yourself an atheist now, David?' said Ancrum one day, in that cheerful, half-ironic tone which the young booksellerresented. 

'I don't call myself anything, ' said David, stoutly. 'I'm all forthis world; we can't know anything about another. At least, that'smy opinion, sir--no offence to you. '

'Oh, dear me, no offence! There have been a _few_philosophers, you know, Davy, since Voltaire. There's a personcalled Kant; I don't know anything about him, but they tell me hemade out a very pretty case, on the practical side anyway, for aGod and immortality. And in England, too, there have been two orthree persons of consequence, you remember, like Coleridge and JohnHenry Newman, who have thought it worth while to believe a little. But you don't care about that?'

The lad stood silent a moment, his colour rising, his fine lipcurling. Then he burst out:

'What's the good of thinking about things by the wrong end? There'ssuch a lot to read!'

And with a great stretch of all his young frame he fell back on thecatalogue he was looking through, while Ancrum went on turning overa copy of 'The Reasoner, ' a vigorous Secularist paper of the day, which he had found on the counter, and which had suggested hisquestion. 

_Knowledge--success:_ it was for these that David burned, andhe laid rapid hands upon them. He had a splendid physique, and atthis moment of his youth he strained it to the utmost. He grudgedthe time for sleep and meals, and on Saturday afternoons, theearly-closing day of Manchester, he would go out to country sales, or lay plans for seeing the few considerable libraries--LordDriffield's among them--which the neighbouring districts possessed. On Sunday he read from morning till night, and once or twice hisassistant John, hammering outside for admittance in the winterdark, wakened the master of the shop from the rickety chair wherehe had fallen asleep over his books in the small hours of themorning. 

His assistant! It may well be asked what a youth of twenty, settingup on thirty pounds capital in a small shop, wanted with anassistant before he had any business to speak of. The story is acurious one. 

Some time in the previous summer Daddy had opened a smoking anddebating room at the Parlour, by way of keeping his _clientele_together and giving a special character to the place. He hadmerely boarded off a bit of the original seed warehouse, put insome rough tables and chairs, and a few newspapers. But by aconjunction of circumstances the place had taken a Secularistcharacter, and the weekly debates which Daddy inaugurated were, for a time at least, well attended. Secularism, like all otherforms of mental energy, had lately been active in Manchester;there had been public discussions between Mr. Holyoake andMr. Bradlaugh as to whether Secularism were necessarily atheisticor no. Some of the old newspapers of the movement, dating fromChartist days, had recently taken a new lease of life; andcombined with the protest against theology was a good deal ofco-operative and republican enthusiasm. Lomax, who had been aSecularist and an Owenite for twenty years, and who was arepublican to boot, threw himself into the _melee_, and theParlour debates during the whole of the autumn and winter of '69-70were full of life, and brought out a good many young speakers, David Grieve among them. Indeed, David was for a time the leader ofthe place, so ready was his gift, so confident and effective hispersonality. 

On one occasion in October he was holding forth on 'Science--thetrue Providence of Life. ' The place was crowded. A well-knownIndependent had been got hold of to answer the young Voltairean, and David was already excited, for his audience was plying him withinterruptions, and taxing to the utmost a natural debating power. 

In the midst of it a printer's devil from the restaurant outside, astout, stupid-looking lad, found his way in, and stood at the doorlistening. The fine classical head of the speaker, the beautifulvoice, the gestures so free and flowing, the fire and fervour ofthe whole performance--these things left him gaping. 

'Who's that?' he ventured to inquire of a man near him, a calicosalesman, well known in the Salford Conservative Association, whohad come to support the Independent speaker. 

The man laughed. 

'That's young Grieve, assistant to old Purcell, Half Street. Hetalks a d--d lot of stuff--blasphemous stuff, too; but ifsomebody'd take and teach him and send him into Parliament, someday he'd make 'em skip, I warrant yo. I never heard onybody framebetter for public speaking, and I've heard a lot. '

The printer's devil stayed and stared through the debate. Then, afterwards, he began to haunt the paths of this young Satan, creptup to him in the news-room, skulked about him in the restaurant. Atlast David took notice of him, and they made friends. 

'Have you got anybody belonging to you?' he asked him shortly. 

'No, ' said the boy. 'Father died last spring; mother was took withpleurisy in November--'

But the words stuck in his throat, and he coughed over them. 

'All right, ' said David; 'come for a walk Sunday afternoon?'

So a pretty constant companionship sprang up between them. JohnDalby came of a decent stock, and was still, as it were, under thepainful and stupefying surprise of those bereavements which hadleft him an orphan. His blue eyes looked bewilderment at the world;he was bullied by the compositors he worked under. Sometimes he hadviolent fits of animal spirits, but in general he was dull andsilent, and no one could have guessed that he often read poetry andcried himself to sleep in the garret where he lodged. Physically hewas a great, overgrown creature, not, in truth, much younger thanDavid. But while David was already the man, John was altogether inthe tadpole-stage--a being of large, ungainly frame, at war withhis own hands and feet, his small eyes lost in his pink, spreadingcheeks, his speech shy and scanty. Yet, such as he was, David founda use for him. Temperaments of the fermenting, expansive sort wanta listener at the moment of early maturity, and almost anytwo-legged thing with the listener's gift will do. David worked offmuch steam on the Saturday or Sunday afternoons, when the two wouldpush out into the country, walking some twenty miles or so for thesheer joy of movement. While the one talked and declaimed, ploughing his violent way through the soil of his young thought, the other, fat and silent, puffed alongside, and each in his ownway was happy. 

Just about the time David was dismissed by Purcell, John'sapprenticeship came to an end. When he heard of the renting of theshop in Potter Street, he promptly demanded to come as assistant. 

'Don't be a fool!' said David, turning upon him; 'what should I wantwith an assistant in that bit of a place? And I couldn't pay you, besides, man. '

'Don't mind that, ' said John, stoutly. 'I'd like to learn the trade. Perhaps you'll set up a printing business by-and-by. Lots ofbooksellers do. Then I'll be handy. '

'And how the deuce are you going to live?' cried David, somewhatexasperated by these unpractical proposals. 'You're not exactly agrasshopper;' and his eye, half angry, half laughing, ran overJohn's plump person. 

To which John replied, undisturbed, that he had got four poundsstill of the little hoard his mother had left him, and, judging bywhat David had told him of his first months in Manchester, he couldmake that last for living a good while. When he had learntsomething of the business with David, he would move on--trust him. 

Whereupon David told him flatly that _he_ wasn't going to helphim waste his money, and sent him about his business. 

On the very day, however, that David opened, he was busy in theshop, when he saw John outside at the stall, groaning under abundle. 

'It's Mr. Lomax ha sent you this, ' said the lad, calmly, 'and I'm toput it up, and tell him how your stock looks. '

The bundle contained Daddy's contributions to young Grieve'swindow, which at the moment were very welcome; and David in hisgratitude instructed the messenger to take back a cordial message. The only notice John took was to lift up two deal shelves that wereleaning against the wall of the shop, and to ask where they were togo. 

And, say what David would, he stuck, and would not be got rid of. With the Lancashire accent he had also the Lancashire persistence, and David after a while gave in, consented that he should stay forsome weeks, at any rate, and then set to work to teach him, in avery impatient and intermittent way. For watching and bargaining atthe stall, at any rate, for fetching and carrying, and for all thatappertains to the carrying and packing of parcels, John presentlydeveloped a surprising energy. David's wits were thereby freed forthe higher matters of his trade, while John was beast of burden. The young master could work up his catalogues, study his famouscollections, make his own bibliographical notes, or run off hereand there by 'bus or train in quest of books for a customer; hecould swallow down his Greek verbs or puzzle out his French forBarbier in the intervals of business; the humbler matters of theshop prospered none the less. 

Meanwhile both lads were vegetarians and teetotalers; both lived asnear as might be on sixpence a day; and an increasing portion ofthe Manchester world--of that world, at any rate, which buysbooks--began, as the weeks rolled on, to take interest in the pairand their venture. 

Christmas came, and David made up his accounts. He had turned overthe whole of his capital in six weeks, had lived and paid his rent, and was very nearly ten pounds to the good. On the evening when hemade this out he sat jubilantly over the fire, thinking of Louie. Certainly it would be soon time for him to send for Louie at thisrate. Yet there were _pros_ and _cons_. He would have tolook after her when she did come, and there would be an end of hisfirst freedom. And what would she find to do?

Silk-weaving had been decaying year by year in Manchester, and forhand-loom weaving, at any rate, there was no opening at all. 

No matter! With his prosperity there came a quickening of the senseof kinship, which would not let him rest. For the first time formany years he thought often of his father. Who and what had hismother been? Why had Uncle Reuben never spoken of his parents, savethat one tormented word in the dark? Why, his father could not havebeen thirty when he died! Some day he would make Uncle Reuben tellall the story--he would know, too, where his father was buried. 

And meanwhile, in a few more weeks, he would write to Kinder. Hewould be good to Louie--he decidedly meant that she should have agood time. Perhaps she had grown out of her tricks by now. Tom saidshe was thought to be uncommon handsome. David made a little faceas he remembered that. She would be all the more difficult tomanage. 

Yet all the time David Grieve's prosperity was the most insecuregrowth imaginable. 

One evening Lucy rushed in late to see Dora. 

'Oh, Dora! Dora! Put down your work at once and listen to me. ' Doralooked up in amazement, to see Lucy's little face all crimson withexcitement and resolution. 

'Dora, I've found it all out: he's going to buy the house over Mr. Grieve's head, and turn him into the street, just as he's gotnicely settled. Oh! he's done it before, I can tell you. There wasa man higher up Half Street he served just the same. He's got themoney, and he's got the spite. Well now, Dora, it's no goodstaring. Has Mr. Grieve been up here lately?'

'No; not lately, ' said Dora, with an involuntary sigh. 'Father'sbeen to see him. He says he's that busy he can't come out. But, Lucy, how do you know all this?'

Whereupon, at first, Lucy wouldn't tell; but being at bottomintensely proud of her own cleverness at last confessed. She hadbeen for long convinced that her father meant mischief to youngGrieve, and had been on the watch. A little listening at doorshere, and a little prying into papers there, had presently givenher the clue. In a private drawer, unlocked by chance, she hadfound a solicitor's letter containing the full description of No. 15 Potter Street, and of some other old houses in the same street, soon to be sold and rebuilt. The description contained notes ofprice and date in her father's hand. That very evening thesolicitor in question had come to see her father. She had beensent upstairs, but had managed to listen all the same. Thepurchase--whatever it was--was to be concluded 'shortly. ' There hadbeen much legal talk, and her father had seemed in a particularlygood temper when Mr. Vance went away. 

'Well now, look here, ' said Lucy, frowning and biting her lips; 'Ishall just go right on and see him. I thought I might have foundhim here. But there's no time to lose. '

Dora had bent over her frame again, and her face was hidden. 

'Why, it's quite late, ' she said, slowly; 'the shop will be shut uplong ago. '

'I don't care--I don't care a bit, ' cried Lucy. 'One can't thinkabout what's proper. I'm just going straight away. '

And she got up feverishly, and put on her hat again. 

'Why can't you tell father and send him? He's downstairs in thereading-room, ' said Dora. 

'I'll go myself, Dora, thank you, ' said Lucy, with an obstinatetoss of her head, as she stood before the old mirror over themantelpiece. 'I dare say you think I'm a very bold girl. It don'tmatter. '

Then for a minute she became absorbed in putting one side of herhair straight. Dora, from behind, sat looking at her, needle inhand. The gaslight fell on her pale, disturbed face, showed for aninstant a sort of convulsion pass across it which Lucy did not see. Then she drew her hand along her eyes, with a low, quiveringbreath, and went back to her work. 

As Lucy opened the door, however, a movement of anxiety, ofconscience, rose in Dora. 

'Lucy, shall I go with you?'

'Oh, no, ' said Lucy, impatiently. 'I know what's what, thank you, Dora. I'll take care of myself. Perhaps I'll come back and tell youwhat he says. '

And she closed the door behind her. Dora did not move from herwork; but her hand trembled so that she made several false stitchesand had to undo them. 

Meanwhile Lucy sped along across Market Street and through St. Ann's Square. Her blood was up, and she could have done anything, braved anybody, to defeat her father and win a smile from DavidGrieve. Yet, as she entered Potter Street, she began to quake alittle. The street was narrow and dark. On one side the olderhouses had been long ago pulled down and replaced by tallwarehouses, which at night were a black and towering mass, withouta light anywhere. The few shops opposite closed early, for in theoffice quarter of Manchester there is very little doing afteroffice hours, when the tide of life ebbs outwards. 

Lucy looked for No. 15, her heart beating fast. There was a lightin the first floor, but the shop-front was altogether dark. Shecrossed the street, and, lifting a shaking hand, rang the bell ofthe very narrow side door. 

Instantly there were sounds inside--a step--and David stood on thethreshold. 

He stared in amazement at his unwonted visitor. 

'Oh, Mr. Grieve--please--I've got something to tell you. Oh, no, Iwon't come in--we can stand here, please, out of the wind. Butfather's going to buy this place over your head, and I thought I'dbetter come and tell you. He'll be pretty mad if he thinks I've letout; but I don't care. '

She was leaning against the wall of the passage, and David couldjust see the defiance and agitation on her face by the light of thegas-lamp outside. 

He himself gave a low whistle. 

'Well, that's rather strong, isn't it, Miss Purcell?'

'It's mean--it's abominable, ' she cried. 'I vowed I'd stop it. But Idon't know what he'll do to me--kill me, most likely. '

'Nobody shall do anything to you, ' said David, decidedly. 'You're abrick. But look here--can you tell me anything more?'

She commanded herself with great difficulty, and told all she knew. David leant against the wall beside her, twisting a meditative lip. The situation was ominous, certainly. He had always known that histenure was precarious, but from various indications he had supposedthat it would be some years yet before his side of the street wasmuch meddled with. That old fox! He must go and see Mr. Ancrum. 

A passion of hate and energy rose within him. Somehow or other hewould pull through. 

When Lucy had finished the tale of her eavesdroppings, the youngfellow shook himself and stood erect. 

'Well, I _am_ obliged to you, Miss Purcell. And now I'll justgo straight off and talk to somebody that I think'll help me. ButI'll see you to Market Street first. '

'Oh!--somebody will see us!' she cried in a fever, 'and tell father. '

'Not they; I'll keep a look out. '

Then suddenly, as they walked along together, a great shyness fellupon them both. Why had she done this thing, and run the risk ofher father's wrath? As David walked beside her, he felt for aninstant, through all his gratitude, as though some one had throwna lasso round him, and the cord were tightening. He could nothave explained the feeling, but it made him curt and restive, absorbed, apparently, in his own thoughts. Meanwhile Lucy's heartswelled and swelled. She _did_ think he would have taken her newsdifferently--have made more of it and her. She wished she had nevercome--she wished she had brought Dora. The familiar consciousnessof failure, of insignificance, returned, and the hot tears rose inher eyes. 

At Market Street she stopped him hurriedly. 

'Don't come any farther. I can get home. '

David, meanwhile, was saying to himself that he was a churlishbrute; but for the life of him he could not get out any prettyspeeches worthy of the occasion. 

'I'm sure I take it most kind of you, Miss Purcell. There's nothingcould have saved me if you hadn't told. And I don't know whether Ican get out of it now. But if ever I can do anything for you, youknow--'

'Oh, never mind!--never mind!' she said, incoherently, stabbed byhis constraint. 'Good night. '

And she ran away into the darkness, choked by the sorest tears shehad ever shed. 

David, meanwhile, went on his way to Ancrum, scourging himself. Ifever there was an ungrateful cur, it was he! Why could he findnothing nice to say to that girl in return for all her pluck? Ofcourse she would get into trouble. Coming to see him at that timeof night, too! Why, it was splendid!

Yet, all the same, he knew perfectly well that if she had beenthere beside him again, he would have been just as tongue-tied asbefore. 

CHAPTER VII

On the following night David walked into the Parlour about eighto'clock, hung up his hat with the air of an emperor, and lookedround for Daddy. 

'Look here, Daddy! I've got something to say to you, but not downhere: you'll be letting out my private affairs, and I can't standthat. '

'Well, come upstairs then, you varmint! You're a poor sort offellow, always suspecting your friends. Come up--come up with you!I'll humour you!'

And Daddy, bursting with curiosity, led the way upstairs to Dora'ssitting-room. Dora was moving about amid a mass of silks, which laycarefully spread out on the table, shade melting into shade, awaiting their transference to a new silk case she had been busyupon. 

As the door opened she look up, and when she saw David her faceflushed all over. 

Daddy pushed the lad in. 

'Dora, he's got some news. Out with it, sir!'

And he stood opposite the young fellow, on tiptoe, quivering withimpatience. 

David put both hands in his pockets, and looked out upon them, radiant. 

'I think, ' he said slowly, 'I've scotched old Purcell this time. Butperhaps you don't know what he's been after?'

'Lucy was in here last night, ' said Dora, hesitating; 'she told meabout it. '

'Lucy!' cried Daddy, exasperated. 'What have you been making secretsabout? I'll have no secrets from me in this house, Dora. Why, whenLucy tells you something important, is it all hidden up from me?Nasty close ways!'

And he looked at her threateningly. 

Nothing piqued the old Bohemian so much as the constant assumptionof the people about him that he was a grown-up baby, of nodiscretion at all. That the assumption was true made no differencewhatever to the irritating quality of it. 

Dora dropped her head a little, but said nothing. David interposed:

'Well, now _I'll_ tell you all about it. '

His tone was triumph itself, and he plunged into his story. Hedescribed what Purcell had meant to do, and how nearly he had doneit. In a month, if the bookseller had had his way, his young rivalwould have been in the street, with all his connection to make overagain. At the moment there was not another corner to be had, withinDavid's means, anywhere near the centre of the town. It would havemeant a completely fresh beginning, and temporary ruin. 

But he had gone to Ancrum. And Ancrum and he had bethought them ofthe rich Unitarian gentleman who had been David's sponsor when hesigned his agreement. 

There and then, at nine o'clock at night, Ancrum had gone off toHigher Broughton, where the good man lived, and laid the casebefore him. Mr. Doyle had taken the night to think it over, and thefollowing morning he had paid a visit to his lawyer. 

'He and his wife thought it a burning shame, he told Mr. Ancrum;and, besides, he's been buying up house property in Manchester forsome time past, only we couldn't know that--that was just luck. Helooked upon it as a good chance both for him and for me. He toldhis lawyer it must be all settled in three hours, and he didn'tmind the price. The lawyer found out that Purcell was haggling, went in to win, put the cash down, and here in my pocket I've gotthe fresh agreement between me and Mr. Doyle--three months' noticeon either side, and no likelihood of my being turned out, if I wantto stay, for the next three or four years. Hurrah!'

And the lad, quite beside himself with jubilation, raised the bluecap he held in his hand, and flung it round his head. Dora stoodand looked at him, leaning lightly against the table, her armsbehind her. His triumph carried her away; her lips parted in ajoyous smile; her whole soft, rounded figure trembled withanimation and sympathy. 

As for Daddy, he could not contain himself. He ran to the top ofthe stairs, and sent a kitchen-boy flying for a bottle ofchampagne. 

'Drink, you varmint, drink!' he said, when the liquor came, 'or I'llbe the death of you! Hold your tongue, Dora! Do you think a man canput up with temperance drinks when his enemy's smitten hip andthigh? Oh, you jewel, David, but you'll bring him low, lad--you'llbring him low before you've done--promise me that. I shall see hima beggar yet, lad, shan't I? Oh, nectar!'

And Daddy poured down his champagne, apostrophising it and David'svengeance together. 

Dora looked distressed. 

'Father--Lucy! How can you say such things?'

'Lucy--eh?--Lucy? She won't be a beggar. She'll marry; she's got abit of good looks of her own. But, David, my lad, what was it youwere saying? How was it you got wind of this precious business?'

David hesitated. 

'Well, it was Miss Purcell told me, ' he said. 'She came to see me atmy place last evening. '

He drew himself together with a little nervous dignity, as thoughforeseeing that Daddy would make remarks. 

'Miss Purcell!--what, Lucy?--_Lucy? Upon_ my word, Davy! Why, her father'll wring her neck when he finds it out. And she came towarn you?'

Daddy stood a moment taking in the situation, then, with a queergrin, he walked up to David and poked him in the ribs. 

'So there were passages--eh, young man--when you were up there?'

The young fellow straightened himself, with a look of annoyance. 

'Nothing of the sort, Daddy; there were no passages. But MissLucy's done me a real friendly act, and I'd do the same for her anyday. '

Dora had sat down to her silks again. As David spoke she bentclosely over them, as though the lamp-light puzzled her usuallyquick perception of shade and quality. 

As for Daddy, he eyed the lad doubtfully. 

'She's got a pretty waist and a brown eye, Davy, and she'sseventeen. '

'She may be for me, ' said David, throwing his head back andspeaking with a certain emphasis and animation. 'But she's a littlebrick to have given me notice of this thing. '

The warmth of these last words produced more effect on Daddy thanhis previous denials. 

'Dora, ' he said, looking round--'Dora, do you believe the varmint?All the same, you know, he'll be for marrying soon. Look at him!'and he pointed a thin theatrical finger at David from across theroom. ' When I was his make I was in love with half the girls in theplace. Blue eyes here--brown eyes there--nothing came amiss to me. '

'Marrying!' said David, with an impatient shrug of the shoulders, but flushing all over. 'You might wait, I think, till I've gotenough to keep one on, let alone two. If you talk such stuff, Daddy, I'll not tell you my secrets when there are any to tell. '

He tried to laugh it off; but Dora's grey eye, glancing timidlyround at him, saw that he was in some discomfort. There was abright colour in _her_ cheek too, and her hand touched hersilks uncertainly. 

'Thank you for nothing, sir, ' said Daddy, unabashed. 'Trust anold hound like me for scenting out what he wants. But, go alongwith you! I'm disappointed in you. The young men nowadays havegot no _blood_! They're made of sawdust and brown paper. Theworld was our orange, and we sucked it. Bedad, we did! But_you_--cold-blooded cubs--go to the devil, I tell you, andread your Byron!'

And, striking an attitude which was a boisterous reminiscence ofMacready, the old wanderer flung out the lines:

 'Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend, Death hath but little left him to destroy. Ah! happy years! Once more, who would not be a boy?'

David laughed out. Daddy turned petulantly away, and looked out ofwindow. The night was dreary, dark, and wet. 

'Dora!'

'Yes, father. '

'Manchester's a damned dull hole. I'm about tired of it. '

Dora started, and her colour disappeared in an instant. She got upand went to the window. 

'Father, you know they'll be waiting for you downstairs, ' she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. 'They always say they can't get onwithout you on debating nights. '

'Stuff and nonsense!' said Daddy, throwing off the hand. But helooked mollified. The new reading-room was at present his pethobby; his interest in the restaurant proper had dropped a gooddeal of late, or so Dora's anxiety persuaded her. 

'It's quite true, ' said David. 'Go and start 'em, Daddy, and I'llcome down soon and cut in. I feel as if I could speak the roof offto-night, and I don't care a hang about what! But first I've gotsomething to say to Miss Dora. I want to ask her a favour. '

He came forward smiling. She gave him a startled look, but hereyes--poor Dora!--could not light on him now without taking a newbrightness. How well his triumph sat on him! How crisply andhandsomely his black hair curled above his open brow!

'More secrets, ' growled Daddy. 

'Nothing of any interest, Daddy. Miss Dora can tell you all aboutit, if she cares. Now go along! Start 'em on the Bishop ofPeterborough and the Secularists. I've got a lot to say about that. '

He pushed Daddy laughingly to the door, and came back again towhere Dora was once more grappling with her silks. Her expressionhad changed again. Oh! she had so many things to open to him, ifonly she could find the courage. 

He sat down and looked at a bit of her embroidery, which layuncovered beside her on the frame. 

'I say, that is fine work!' he said, wondering. 'I hope you get wellpaid for it, Miss Dora. You ought. Well, now, I do want to ask youradvice. This business of the house has set me thinking about a lotof things. '

He lay back in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and threwone leg over the other. He was in such a state of nervousexcitement, Dora could see, that he could hardly keep himselfstill. 

'Did I ever tell you about my sister? No, I know I haven't. I'vekept it dark. But now I'm settled I want to have her to live withme. There's no one but us two, except the old uncle and aunt thatbrought us up. I must stick to her--and I mean to. But she's notlike other girls. She's a queer one. '

He stopped, frowning a little as the recollections of Louie rushedacross him, seeking for words in which to draw her. And directly hepaused, Dora, who had dropped her silks again in her suddenastonishment, burst into questions. How old was his sister? Was shein Manchester? Had she a trade? Her soul was full of a warm, unexpected joy, her manner was eager--receptive. He took up hisparable and told the story of his childhood and Louie's at thefarm. His black eye kindled as he looked past Dora into thepast--into the bosom of the Scout. Owing partly to an imaginativegift, partly to his reading habit, when he was stimulated--when hewas, as it were, talking at large, trying to present a subject as awhole, to make a picture of it--he rose into ways of speech quitedifferent from those of his class, and different from his owndialect of every day. This latent capacity for fine expression wasmostly drawn out at this time by his attempts at public speaking. But to-night, in his excitement, it showed in his talk, and Dorawas bewildered. Oh, how clever he was! He talked like a book--justlike a book. She pushed her chair back from the silks, and satabsorbed in the pleasure of listening, environed too by the happythought that he was making a friend of her, giving her--plain, insignificant, humble Dora Lomax--his confidence. 

As for him, the more he talked the more he enjoyed talking. Neversince he came to Manchester had he fallen into such a moment ofunburdenment, of intimacy, or something like it, with any humanbeing. He had talked to Ancrum and to John. But that was quitedifferent. No man confides in a woman as he confides in a man. Thetouch of difference of sex gives charm and edge, even when, as wasthe case here, the man has no thrill whatever in his veins, and nothought of love-making in his head. 

'You must have been very fond of your sister, ' Dora said at last, tremulously. 'You two all alone--and no mother. '

Somehow the soft sentiment in her words and tone struck himsuddenly as incongruous. His expression changed. 

'Oh, I don't know, ' he said, with a sort of laugh, not a verybright one. 'Don't you imagine I was a pattern brother; I was abrute to her lots of times. And Louie--ah, well, you'll see foryourself what she's like; she's a queer customer sometimes. And nowI'll tell you what I wanted to ask you, Miss Dora. You see, ifLouie comes it won't do for her to have no employment, after she'shad a trade all day; and she won't take to mine--she can't abidebooks. '

And he explained to her his perplexities--the ebbing of the silktrade from Manchester, and so on. He might hire a loom, but Louiewould get no work. All trades have their special channels, and keepto them. 

So it had occurred to him, if Louie was willing, would Dora takeher as an apprentice, and teach her the church work? He would bequite ready to pay for the teaching; that would be only fair. 

'Teach her my work!' cried Dora, instinctively drawing back. 'Oh, Idon't think I could. '

He coloured, and misunderstood her. In a great labour-hive likeLancashire, with its large and small industries, the native ear isvery familiar with the jealous tone of the skilled worker, threatened with competition in a narrow trade. 

'I didn't mean any offence, ' he said, with a little stiffness. 'Idon't want to take the bread out of anybody's mouth. If there isn'twork to be had, you've only to say so, Miss Dora. '

'Oh, I didn't mean that, ' she cried, wounded in her turn. 'There'splenty of work. At the shop last week they didn't know what to dofor hands. If she was clever at it, she'd get lots of work. But--'

She laid her hand on her frame lovingly, not knowing how to explainherself, her gentle brows knitting in the effort of thought. 

Her work was so much more to her than ordinary work paid for inordinary coin. Into these gorgeous altar-cloths, or these delicatewrappings for chalice and paten, she stitched her heart. To work atthem was prayer. Jesus, and His Mother, and the Saints; it was withthem she communed as her stitches flowed. She sat in a mystic, aheavenly world. And the silence and solitude of her work made oneof its chief charms. And now to be asked to share it with a strangegirl, who could not love it as she did, who would take it as hardbusiness--never to be alone any more with her little black book andher prayers!

And then she looked up, and met a young man's half-offended look, and a shy, proud eye, in which the nascent friendship of fiveminutes before seemed to be sinking out of sight. 

'Oh yes, I will, ' she cried. 'Of course I will. It just sounded abit strange to me at first. I've been so used to be alone always. '

But he demurred now--wished stiffly to take back his proposal. Hedid not want to put upon her, and perhaps, after all, Louie wouldhave her own notions. 

But she could not bear it, and as he retreated she pressed forward. Of course there was work. And it would be very good for her, itwould stir her up to take a pupil; it was just her old-maidishways--it had startled her a bit at first. 

And then, her reserve giving ay more and more as her emotion grew, she confessed herself at last completely. 

'You see, it's not just _work_ to me, and it's not the money, though I'm glad enough for that; but it's for the church; and I'dlive on a crust, and do it for nothing, if I could!'

She looked up at him--that ardent dream-life of hers leaping to theeyes, transforming the pale face. 

David sat silent and embarrassed. He did not know what to say--howto deal with this turn in the conversation. 

'Oh, I know you think I'm just foolish, ' she said, sadly, taking upher needle. 'You always did; but I'll take your sister--indeed Iwill. '

'Perhaps you'll turn her your way of thinking, ' said David, with alittle awkward laugh, looking round for his hat. 'But Louie isn't aneasy one to drive. '

'Oh, you can't drive people!' cried Dora, flushing; 'you can't, andyou oughtn't. But if Father Russell talked to her she might likehim--and the church. Oh, Mr. Grieve, won't you go one Sunday andhear him--won't you--instead of--'

She did not finish her sentence, but David finished it for her:'Instead of going to the Hall of Science? Well, but you know, MissDora, I being what I am, I get more good out of a lecture at theHall of Science than I should out of Father Russell. I should bequarrelling with him all the time, and wanting to answer him. '

'Oh, you couldn't, ' said Dora eagerly, 'he's so good, and he's alearned man--I'm sure he is. Mr. Foss, the curate, told me theythink he'll be a bishop some day. '

'All the better for him, ' said David, unmoved. 'It don't make anydifference to me. No, Miss Dora, don't you fret yourself about me. Books are my priests. '

He stood over her, his hands on his sides, smiling. 

'Oh, no!' cried Dora, involuntarily. 'You mustn't say that. Bookscan't bring us to God. '

'No more can priests, ' he said, with a sudden flash of his darkeyes, a sudden dryness of his tone. 'If there is a God to bring usto--prove me that first, Miss Dora. But it's a shame to say thesethings to you--that it is--and I've been worrying you a deal toomuch about my stupid affairs. Good night. We'll talk about FatherRussell again another time. '

He ran downstairs. Dora went back to her frame, then pushed it awayagain, ran eagerly to the window, and pulled the blind aside. Downbelow in the lighted street, now emptying fast, she saw the tallfigure emerge, saw it run down the street, and across St. Mary'sGate. She watched it till it disappeared; then she put her handsover her face, and leant against the window-frame weeping. Oh, whata sudden descent from a moment of pure joy! How had the jarringnote come? They had been put wrong with each other; and perhaps, after all, he would be no more to her now than before. And she hadseemed to make such a leap forward--to come so near to him. 

'Oh! I'll just be good to his sister, ' she said to herselfdrearily, with an ache at her heart that was agony. 

Then she thought of him as he had sat there beside her; andsuddenly in her pure thought there rose a vision of herself in hisarms, her head against his broad shoulder, her hand stealing roundhis neck. She moved from the window and threw herself down in thedarkest corner of the room, wrestling desperately with what seemedto her a sinful imagination. She ought not to think of him at all;she loathed herself. Father Russell would tell her she was wicked. He had no faith--he was a hardened unbeliever--and she could notmake herself think of that at all--could not stop herself fromwanting--_wanting_ him for her own, whatever happened. 

And it was so foolish too, as well as bad; for he hadn't an idea offalling in love with anybody--anyone could see that. And she whowas not pretty, and not a bit clever--it was so likely he wouldtake a fancy to her! Why, in a few years he would be a big man, hewould have made a fortune, and then he could take his pick. 

'Oh! and Lucy--Lucy would _hate_ me. '

But the thought of Lucy, instead of checking her, brought with itagain a wild gust of jealousy. It was fiercer than before, thecraving behind it stronger. She sat up, forcing back her tears, herwhole frame tense and rigid. Whatever happened he would_never_ marry Lucy! And who could wish it? Lucy was just alittle, vain, selfish thing, and when she found David Grievewouldn't have her, she would soon forget him. The surging longingwithin refused, proudly refused, to curb itself--for Lucy's sake. 

Then the bell of St. Ann's slowly began to strike ten o'clock. Itbrought home to her by association one of the evening hymns in thelittle black book she was frequently accustomed to croon to herselfat night as she put away her work:

 O God who canst not change nor fail, Guiding the hours as they roll by, Brightening with beams the morning pale, And burning in the mid-day sky!

 Quench thou the fires of hate and strife, The wasting fever of the heart; From perils guard our feeble life, And to our souls thy peace impart. 

The words flowed in upon her, but they brought no comfort, only afresh sense of struggle and effort. Her Christian peace was gone. She felt herself wicked, faithless, miserable. 

Meanwhile, in the stormy night outside, David was running andleaping through the streets, flourishing his stick from side toside in cut and thrust with an imaginary enemy whenever the mainthoroughfares were left behind, and he found himself in some darkregion of warehouses, where his steps echoed, and he was king alikeof roadway and of pavement. 

The wind, a stormy north-easter, had risen since the afternoon. David fought with it, rejoiced in it. After the little hotsitting-room, the stinging freshness, the rough challenge of thegusts, were delicious to him. He was overflowing with spirits, withhealth, with exultation. 

As he thought of Purcell he could hardly keep himself from shoutingaloud. If he could only be there to see when Purcell learnt how hehad been foiled! And trust Daddy to spread a story which wouldcertainly do Purcell no good! No, in that direction he felt that hewas probably safe from attack for a long time to come. Successbeckoned to him; his enemy was under foot; his will and his giftshad the world before them. 

Father Russell indeed! Let Dora Lomax set him on. His young throatfilled with contemptuous laughter. As a bookseller, _he_ knewwhat the clergy read, what they had to say for themselves. How muchlonger could it go on, this solemn folly of Christian superstition?'Just give us a good Education Bill, and we shall see!'

Then, as he fell thinking of his talk with Dora and Lomax, hewished impatiently that he had been even plainer with Daddy aboutLucy Purcell. With regard to her he felt himself caught in atangled mesh of obligation. He must, somehow, return her theservice she had done him. And then all the world would think he wasmaking up to her and wanted to marry her. Meanwhile--in the midstof real gratitude, a strong desire to stand between her and herfather, and much eager casting about for some means of paying herback--his inner mind was in reality pitilessly critical towardsher. Her overdone primness and neatness, her fashionable frocks, ofwhich she was so conscious, her horror of things and people thatwere not 'nice, ' her contented ignorance and silly chatteringways--all these points of manner and habit were scored against herin his memory. She had become less congenial to him rather thanmore since he knew her first. All the same, she was a little brick, and he would have liked one minute to kiss her for her pluck, makeher some lordly present, and the next--never to see her again!

In reality his mind at this moment was filling with romantic imagesand ideals totally remote from anything suggested by his owneveryday life. A few weeks before, old Barbier, his French master, had for the first time lent him some novels of George Sand's. Davidhad carried them off, had been enchanted to find that he could nowread them with ease and rapidity, and had plunged straightway intothe new world thus opened to him with indescribable zest andpassion. His Greek had been neglected, his science laid aside. Night after night he had been living with Valentine, with Consuelo, with Caroline in 'Le Marquis de Villemer. ' His poetical reading ofthe winter had prepared the way for what was practically his firstintroduction to the modern literature of passion. The stimulatingnovelty and foreignness of it was stirring all his blood. GeorgeSand's problems, her situations, her treatment of the greatquestions of sex, her social and religious enthusiasms--thesethings were for the moment a new gospel to this provincialself-taught lad, as they had been forty years before to the youthof 1830. Under the vitalising touch of them the man was fastdeveloping out of the boy; the currents of the nature weresetting in fresh directions. And in such a mood, and with suchpreoccupations, how was one to bear patiently with foolish, friendly fingers, or with uncomfortable thoughts of your own, pointing you to _Lucy Purcell?_ With the great marriage-nightscene from 'Valentine' thrilling in your mind, how was it possibleto think of the prim self-conceit, the pettish temper and mincingairs of that little person in Half Street without irritation?

No, no! _The unknown, the unforeseen!_ The young man plungedthrough the rising storm, and through the sleety rain, which hadbegun to beat upon him, with face and eyes uplifted to the night. It was as though he searched the darkness for some form which, evenas he looked, began to take vague and luminous shape there. 

Next morning Daddy, in his exultation, behaved himself with somegrossness towards his enemy. About eleven o'clock he becamerestless, and began patrolling Market Place, passing every now andthen up the steps into the narrow passage of Half Street, and soround by the Cathedral and home. He had no definite purpose, but'have a squint at Tom, ' under the circumstances, he must, some wayor other. 

And, sure enough, as he was coming back through Half Street on oneof his rounds, and was within a few yards of Purcell's window, thebookseller came out with his face set in Daddy's direction. Purcell, whose countenance, so far as Daddy could see at firstsight, was at its blackest and sourest, and whose eyes were on theground, did not at once perceive his adversary, and came stern on. 

The moment was irresistible. Laying his thumbs in his waistcoatpocket, and standing so as to bar his brother-in-law's path, Daddylaunched a few unctuous words in his smoothest voice. 

'Tom, me boy, thou hast imagined a device which thou wast not ableto perform. But the Lord, Tom, hath made thee turn thy back. Andthey of thy own household, Tom, have lifted up the heel againstthee. '

Purcell, strong, dark-browed fellow that he was, wavered andblenched for a moment under the surprise of this audacious attack. Then with an oath he put out his hand, seized Daddy's thinshoulder, flung him violently round, and passed him. 

'Speak to me again in the street, you scoundrel, and I'll give youin charge!' he threw behind him, as he strode on just in time toavoid a flight of street-arabs, who had seen the scuffle from adistance and were bearing down eagerly upon him. 

Daddy went home in the highest spirits, stepping jauntily alonglike a man who has fulfilled a mission. But when he came to boasthimself to Dora, he found to his chagrin that he had only earned ascolding. Dora flushed up, her soft eyes all aflame. 

'You've done nothing but mischief, father, ' said Dora, bitterly. 'How _could_ you say such things? You might have left UncleTom to find out for himself about Lucy. He'll be mad enough withoutyour stirring him up. Now he'll forbid her to come here, or see meat all. I don't know what'll become of that child; and whateverpossessed you to go aggravating him worse and worse I can't think. '

Daddy blinked under this, but soon recovered himself. No one, hevowed, could be expected to put up for ever with Purcell's meantricks. He had held his tongue for twenty-one years, and now he hadpaid back one _little_ text in exchange for the hundredswherewith Purcell had been wont to break his bones for him in pastdays. As for Dora, she hadn't the spirit of a fly. 

'Well, I dare say I am afraid, ' said Dora, despondently. 'I sawUncle Tom yesterday, too, and he gave me a look made me feel colddown my back. I don't like anybody to hate us like that, father. Who knows--'

A tremor ran through her. She gave her father a piteous, childishlook. She had the timidity, the lack of self-confidence which seemsto cling through life to those who have been at a disadvantage withthe world in their childhood and youth. The anger of a man likePurcell terrified her, lay like a nightmare on a sensitive andintrospective nature. 

'Pish!' said Daddy, contemptuously; 'I should like to know what harmhe can do us, now that I've turned so d--d respectable. Though itis a bit hard on a man to have to keep so in order to spite hisbrother-in-law. '

Dora laughed and sighed. She came up to her father's chair, put hishair straight, re-tied his tie, and then kissed him on the cheek. 

'Father, you're not getting tired of the Parlour?' she said, unsteadily. He evaded her downward look, and tried to shake heroff. 

'Don't I slave for you from morning till night, you thankless chit, you? And don't you begrudge me all the little amusements which turnthe tradesman into the man and sweeten the pill of bondage--eh, youpoor-souled thing?'

Her eyes, however, drew his after them, whether he would or no, andthey surveyed each other--he uneasily hostile; she sad. She slowlyshook her head, and he perfectly understood what was in her mind, though she did not speak. He _had_ been extremely slack atbusiness lately; the month's accounts made up that morning had beenunusually disappointing; and twice during the last ten days Dorahad sat up till midnight to let her father in, and had tried withall the energy of a sinking heart to persuade herself that it wasaccident, and that he was only excited, and not drunk. 

Now, as she stood looking at him, suddenly all the horror of thoselong-past days came back upon her, thrown up against the peace ofthe last few years. She locked her hands round his neck with avehement pathetic gesture. 

'Father, be good to me! don't let bad people take you away fromme--don't, father--you're all I have--all I ever shall have. '

Daddy's green eyes wavered again uncomfortably. 

'Stuff!' he said, irritably. 'You'll get a husband directly, andthink no more of me than other girls do when the marrying fit takes'em. What are you grinning at now, I should like to know?'

For she was smiling--a light tremulous smile which puzzled him. 

'At you, father. You'll have to keep me whether you like it or no. For I'm not a marrying sort. '

She looked at him with a curious defiance, her lip twitching. 

'Oh, we know all about that!' said Daddy, impatiently, adding in amincing voice, '"I will not love; if I do hang me; i' faith I willnot. " No, my pretty dear, not till the "wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy" comes this road--oh, no, not till next time! Quite so. '

She let him rail, and said nothing. She sat down to her work; hefaced round upon her suddenly, and said, frowning:

'What do you mean by it, eh? You're as good-looking as anybody!'

'Well, I want you to think it, father, ' she said, affectionately, raising her eyes to his. A mother must have seen the shrinkingsadness beneath the smile. What Daddy saw was simply a roundedgirlish face, with soft cheeks and lips which seemed to him madefor kissing; nothing to set the Thames on fire, perhaps, but whyshould she run herself down? It annoyed him, touched his vanity. 

'Oh, I dare say!' he said to her, roughly, with an affectedbrutality. 'But you'll be precious disappointed if some one elsedoesn't think so too. Don't tell me!'

She bent over her frame without speaking. But her heart filled withbitterness, and a kind of revolt against her life. 

Meanwhile her conscience accused her about Lucy. Lucy must have gotherself into trouble at home, that she was sure of. And it wasunlike her to keep it to herself--not to come and complain. 

Some days--a week--passed. But Dora dared not venture herself intoher uncle's house after Daddy's escapade, and she was, besides, much pressed with her work. A whole set of altar furniture for anew church at Blackburn had to be finished by a given day. 

The affairs of the Parlour troubled her, and she got up long beforeit was light to keep the books in order and to plan for the day. Daddy had no head for figures, and he seemed to her to be growingcareless about expenses. Her timid, over-anxious mind conjured upthe vision of a slowly rising tide of debt, and it haunted her allday. When she went to her frame she was already tired out, and yetthere she sat over it hour after hour. 

Daddy was blind. But Sarah, the stout cook, who worshipped her, knew well enough that she was growing thin and white. 

'If yo doan't draw in yo'll jest do yoursel a mischief, ' she saidto her, angrily. 'Yo're nowt but a midge onyways, and a body 'llsoon be able to see through yo. '

'I shall be all right, Sarah, ' Dora would say. 

'Aye, we'st aw on us be aw reet in our coffins, ' returned the irateSarah. Then, melting into affection, 'Neaw, honey, be raysonable, an' I'st just run round t' corner, an' cook you up a bit o' meatfor your supper. Yo git no strength eawt i' them messin things yoeat. Theer's nowt but wind in em. '

But not even the heterodox diet with which, every now and then, Dora for peace' sake allowed herself to be fed, behind Daddy'sback, put any colour into her cheeks. She went heavily in thesedays, and the singularly young and childish look which she had kepttill now went into gradual eclipse. 

David Grieve dropped in once or twice during the week to laugh andgossip about Purcell with Daddy. Thanks to Daddy's tongue, thebookseller's plot against his boy rival was already known to alarge circle of persons, and was likely to cost him customers. 

Whenever she heard the young full voice below or on the stairs, Dora would, as it were, draw herself together--stand on herdefence. Sometimes she asked him eagerly about his sister. Had hewritten? No; he thought he would still wait a week or two. Ah, well, he must let her know. 

And, on the whole, she was glad when he went, glad to get to bedand sleep. Being no sentimental heroine, she was prosaicallythankful that she kept her sleep. Otherwise she must have fallenill, and the accounts would have gone wrong. 

At last one evening came a pencil note from Lucy, in these terms:

'You may come and see me, father says. I've been ill. --LUCY. '

In a panic Dora put on her things and ran. Mary Ann, the littlehunted maid, let her in, looking more hunted and scared than usual. Miss Lucy was better, she said, but she had been 'terr'ble bad. 'No, she didn't know what it was took her. They'd got a nurse forher two nights, and she, Mary Ann, had been run off her legs. 

'Why didn't you send for me?' cried Dora, and hurried up to theattic. Purcell did not appear. 

Lucy was waiting for her, looking out eagerly from a bank ofpillows. 

Dora could not restrain an exclamation which was almost a cry. Shecould not have believed that anyone could have changed so in tendays. Evidently the acute stage--whatever had been the illness--waspast. There was already a look of convalescence in the white face, with its black-rimmed eyes and peeling lips. But the loss of fleshwas extraordinary for so short a time. The small face was sothinned and blanched that the tangled masses of golden-brown hairin which it was framed seemed ridiculously out of proportion to it;the hand playing with some grapes on the counterpane was of aghostly lightness. 

Dora was shocked almost beyond speaking. She stood holding Lucy'shand, and Lucy looked up at her, evidently enjoying herconsternation, for a smile danced in her hollow eyes. 

'Lucy, _why_ didn't you send for me?'

'Because I was so feverish at first. I was all light-headed, anddidn't know where I was; and then I was so weak I didn't care aboutanything, ' said Lucy, in a small thread of a voice. 

'What was it?'

'Congestion of the lungs, ' said the girl, with pride. 'They juststopped it, or you'd be laying me out now, Dora. Dr. Alford toldfather I was dreadful run-down or I'd never have taken it. I'm togo to Hastings. Father's got a cousin there that lets lodgings. '

'But how did you get so ill, Lucy?'

Lucy was silent a bit. Then she said:

'Sit down close here. My voice is so bad still. '

Dora sat close to her pillow, and bent over, stroking her handswith emotion. The fright of her entrance was still upon her. 

'Well, you know, ' she said in a hoarse whisper, 'father found outabout me and Mr. Grieve--I don't know how, but it was one morning. I was sitting in here, and he came in all white, with his eyesglaring. I thought he was going to kill me, and I was thatfrightened, I watched my chance, and ran out of the door and alonginto Mill Gate as fast as I could to get away from him; and then Ithought I saw him coming after me, and I ran on across the bridgeand up Chapel Street a long, long way. I was in a terrible fright, and mad with him besides. I declared to myself I'd never come backhere. Well, it was pouring with rain, and I got wet through. Then Ididn't know where to go, and what do you think I did? I just gotinto the Broughton tram, and rode up and down all day! I had ashilling or two in my pocket, and I waited and dodged a bit ateither end, so the conductor shouldn't find out. And that was whatdid it--sitting in my wet things all day. I didn't think anythingabout dinner, I was that mad. But when it got dark, I thought ofthat girl--you know her, too--Minnie Park, that lives with herbrother and sells fents, up Cannon Gate. And somehow I dragged upthere--I thought I'd ask her to take me in. And what happened Idon't rightly know. I suppose I was took with a faint before Icould explain anything, for I was shivering and pretty bad when Igot there. Anyway, she put me in a cab and brought me home; and Idon't remember anything about it, for I was queer in the head verysoon after they got me to bed. Oh, I _was_ bad! It was just asqueak, '--said Lucy, her voice dropping from exhaustion; but hereyes glittered in her pinched face with a curious triumph, difficult to decipher. 

Dora kissed her tenderly, and entreated her not to talk; she wassure it was bad for her. But Lucy, as usual, would not be managed. She held herself quite still, gathering breath and strength; thenshe began again:

'If I'd died, perhaps _he'd_ have been sorry. You know who Imean. It was all along of him. And father 'll never forgiveme--never. He looks quite different altogether somehow. Dora!you're not to tell him anything till I've got right away. Ithink--I think--I _hate_ him!'

And suddenly her beautiful brown eyes opened wide and fierce. 

Dora hung over her, a strange, mingled passion in her look. 'Youpoor little thing!' she said slowly, with a deep emphasis, answering not the unreal Lucy of those last words, but the realone, so pitifully evident beneath. 

'But look here, Dora; when I'm gone away, you _may_ tell him, you _must_ tell him, Dora, ' said the child, imperiously. 'I'dnot have him see me now for anything. I made Mary Ann put all theglasses away. I don't want to remember what a fright I am. But atHastings I'll soon get well; and--and remember, Dora, you_are_ to tell him. I'd like him to know I nearly caught mydeath that day, and that it was all along of him!'

She laid her hands across each other on the sheet with a curioussigh of satisfaction, and was quiet for a little, while Dora heldher hand. But it was not long before the stillness broke up insudden agitation. A tremor ran through her, and she caught Dora'sfingers. In her weakness she could not control herself, and herinmost trouble escaped her. 

'Oh, Dora, he wasn't kind to me, not a bit--when I went to tell himthat night. Oh! I cried when I came home. I _did_ think he'dhave taken it different. '

'What did he say?' asked Dora, quietly. Her face was turned awayfrom Lucy, but she still held her hand. 

'Oh, I don't know!' said Lucy, moving her head restlessly from sideto side and gulping down a sob. 'I believe he was just sorry it was_me_ he'd got to thank. Oh, I don't know!--I don't know!--verylikely he didn't mean it. '

She waited a minute, then she began again:

'Oh of course you think I'm silly; and that I'd have much morechance if I turned proud, and pretended I didn't care. I know somegirls _say_ they'd never let a man know they cared for himfirst. I don't believe in 'em! But I don't care. I can't help it. It's my way. But, Dora, look here!'

The tears gathered thick in her eyes. Dora, bending anxiously overher, was startled by the change of expression in her. From whatdepths of new emotion had the silly Lucy caught the sweetness whichtrembled for a moment through every line of her little trivialface?

'You know, Dora, it was all nonsense at the beginning. I justwanted some one to amuse myself with and pay me attentions. But itisn't nonsense now. And I don't want him all for myself. Fridaynight I thought I was going to die. I don't care whether the doctordid or not; _I_ did. And I prayed a good deal. It was queerpraying, I dare say. I was very light-headed, but I thanked God Iloved him, though--though--he didn't care about me; and I thoughtif I did get well, and he were to take a fancy to me, I'd show himI could be as nice as other girls. I wouldn't want everything formyself, or spend a lot of money on dress. '

She broke off for want of breath. This moral experience of hers wasso new and strange to her that she could hardly find words in whichto clothe it. 

Dora had slipped down beside her and buried her face in the bed. When Lucy stopped, she still knelt there in a quivering silence. But Lucy could not bear her to be silent--she must have sympathy. 

'Aren't you glad, Dora?' she said presently, when she had gatheredstrength again. 'I thought you'd be glad. You've always wanted me toturn religious. And--and--perhaps, when I get well and come back, I'll go with you to St. Damian's, Dora. I don't know what it is. Isuppose it's caring about somebody--and being ill--makes one feellike this. '

And, drawing herself from Dora's hold, she turned on her side, putboth her thin hands under her cheek, and lay staring at the windowwith a look which had a certain dreariness in it. 

Dora at last raised herself. Lucy could not see her face. There wasin it a sweet and solemn resolution--a new light and calm. 

'Dear Lucy, ' she said, tremulously, laying her cheek against hercousin's shoulder, 'God speaks to us when we are unhappy--that waswhat you felt. He makes everything a voice to call unto Himself. '

Lucy did not answer at once. Then suddenly she turned, and saideagerly:

'Dora, did you ever ask him--did you ever find out--whether he wasthinking about getting married? You said you would. '

'He isn't, Lucy. He was vexed with father for speaking about it. Ithink he feels he must make his way first. His business takes himup altogether. '

Lucy gave an irritable sigh, closed her eyes, and would talk nomore. Dora stayed with her, and nursed her through the evening. When at last the nurse arrived who was to take charge of herthrough the night, Lucy pulled Dora down to her and said, in ahoarse, excitable whisper:

'_Mind_ you tell him--that I nearly died--that father'llnever be the same to me again--and it was all for him! You needn'tsay _I_ said so. '

Late that night Dora stood long at her attic-window in the rooflooking out at the April night. From a great bank of clouds to theeast the moon was just appearing, sending her light along the windystreamers which, issuing from the main mass, spread like wide openfingers across the inner heaven. Opposite there was an old timberedhouse, one of the few relics of an earlier Manchester, which still, in the very centre of the modern city, thrusts out its broad eavesand overhanging stories beyond the line of the street. Above andbehind it, roof beyond roof, to the western limit of sight, roseblock after block of warehouses, vast black masses, symbols of thegreat town, its labours and its wealth; far to the right, closingthe street, the cathedral cut the moonlit sky; and close at handwas an old inn, with a wide archway, under which a huge dog laysleeping. 

Town and sky, the upper clouds and stars, the familiar streets andbuildings below--to-night they were all changed for Dora, and itwas another being that looked at them. In all intense cases ofreligious experience the soul lies open to 'voices'--to impressionswhich have for it the most vivid and, so to speak, physicalreality. Jeanne d'Arc's visions were but an extreme instance ofwhat humbler souls have known in their degree in all ages. Theheavenly voices speak, and the ear actually hears. So it was withDora. It seemed to her that she had been walking in a feverishloneliness through the valley of the shadow of death; that one likeunto the Son of Man had drawn her thence with warning and rebuke, and she was now at His feet, clothed and in her right mind. Wordswere in her ear, repeated again and again--peremptory words whichstabbed and healed at once: _'Daughter, thou shalt not covet. Ihave refused thee this gift. If it be My will to give it toanother, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me. '_

As she sank upon her knees, she thought of the confession she wouldmake on Sunday--of the mysterious sanctity and sweetness of thesingle life--of the vocation of sacrifice laid upon her. There rosein her a kind of ecstasy of renunciation. Her love--already sohopeless, so starved!--was there simply that she might offer itup--burn it through and through with the fires of the spirit. 

Lucy should never know, and David should never know. Unconsciously, sweet soul, there was a curious element of spiritual arrogancemingled with this absolute surrender of the one passionate humandesire her life was ever to wrestle with. The baptised member ofChrist's body could not pursue the love of David Grieve, could notmarry him as he was now, without risk and sin. But Lucy--the childof schism, to whom the mysteries of Church fellowship andsacramental grace were unknown--for her, in her present exaltation, Dora felt no further scruples. Lucy's love was clearly 'sent' toher; it was right, whether it were ultimately happy or no, becauseof the religious effect it had already had upon her. 

The human happiness Dora dared no longer grasp at for herself sheyearned now to pour lavishly, quickly, into Lucy's hands. Onlyso--such is our mingled life!--could she altogether still, violently and by force, a sort of upward surge of the soulwhich terrified her now and then. A mystical casuistry, bredin her naturally simple nature by the subtle influences of along-descended Christianity, combined in her with a piteous humaninstinct. When she rose from her knees she was certain that shewould never win and marry David Grieve; she was equally certainthat she would do all in her power to help little Lucy to win andmarry him. 

So, like them of old, she pressed the spikes into her flesh, andfound a numbing consolation in the pain. 

CHAPTER VIII

Some ten days more elapsed before Lucy was pronounced fit to travelsouth. During this time Dora saw her frequently, and the bondbetween the two girls grew much closer than before. On the onehand, Lucy yielded herself more than she had ever done yet toDora's example and persuasion, promised to go to church and see atleast what it was like when she got to Hastings, and let Doraprovide her with some of her favourite High Church devotionalbooks. On the other, it was understood between them that Dora wouldlook after Lucy's interests, and keep her informed how the land laywhile she was in the south, and Lucy, with the blindness ofself-love, trusted herself to her cousin without a suspicion or aqualm. 

While she was tending Lucy, Dora never saw Purcell but twice, whenshe passed him in the little dark entry leading to the private partof the house, and on those occasions he did not, so far as shecould perceive, make any answer whatever to her salutation. He waschanged, she thought. He had always been a morose-looking man, withan iron jaw; but now there was a fixed venom and disquiet, as wellas a new look of age, in the sallow face, which made it doublyunpleasing. She would have been sorry for his loneliness and hisdisappointment in Lucy but for the remembrance of his mean plotagainst David Grieve, and for a certain other little fact. Amiddle-aged woman, in a dowdy brown-stuff dress and black mantle, had begun to haunt the house. She sat with Purcell sometimes in theparlour downstairs, and sometimes he accompanied her out of doors. Mary Ann reported that she was a widow, a Mrs. Whymper, whobelonged to the same chapel that Purcell did, and who was supposedby those who knew to have been making up to him for some time. 

'And perhaps she'll get him after all, ' said the little ugly maid, with a grin. 'Catch me staying then, Miss Dora! It's bad enough asit is. '

On one occasion Dora came across the widow, waiting in the littlesitting-room. She was an angular person, with a greyish-browncomplexion, a prominent mouth and teeth, and a generally snappish, alert look. After a few commonplaces, in which Mrs. Whymper wasclearly condescending, she launched into a denunciation of Lucy'sill behaviour to her father, which at last roused Dora to defence. She waxed bold, and pointed out that Lucy might have been managedif her father had been a little more patient with her, had allowedher a few ordinary amusements, and had not insisted in forcing herat once, fresh from school, into ways and practices she did notnaturally like, while she had never been trained to them by forceof habit. 

'Hoity toity, Miss!' said the widow, bridling, 'young people arevery uppish nowadays. They never seem to remember there is such athing as the fifth commandment. In _my_ young days what afather said was law, and no questions asked; and I've seen many aLancashire man take a stick to his gell for less provocation thanthis gell's given her feyther! I wonder at you, Miss Lomax, that Ido, for backing her up. But I'm afraid from what I hear you've beentaking up with a lot of Popish ways. '

And the woman looked her up and down with an air which plainly saidthat she was on her own ground in that parlour, and might sayexactly what she pleased there. 

'If I have, I don't see that it matters to you, ' said Dora quietly, and retreated. 

Yes, certainly, a stepmother looked likely! Lucy in her bedroomupstairs knew nothing, and Dora decided to tell her nothing tillshe was stronger. But this new development made the child's futuremore uncertain than ever. 

On the day before her departure for Hastings, Lucy came out for ashort walk, by way of hardening herself for the journey. She walkedround the cathedral and up Victoria Street, and then, tired outwith the exertion, she made her way in to Dora, to rest. Her facewas closely hidden by a thick Shetland veil, for, in addition toher general pallor and emaciation, her usually clear and brilliantskin was roughened and blotched here and there by some effect ofher illness; she could not bear to look at herself in the glass, and shrank from meeting any of her old acquaintances. It was, indeed, curious to watch the effect of the temporary loss of beautyupon her; her morbid impatience under it showed at every turn. Butfor it, Dora was convinced that she must and would have put herselfin David Grieve's way again before leaving Manchester. As it was, she was still determined not to let him see her. 

She came in, much exhausted, and threw herself into Daddy'sarm-chair with groans of self-pity. Did Dora think she would everbe strong again--ever be anything but an ugly fright? It was hardto have all this come upon you, just through doing a service tosome one who didn't care. 

'Hasn't he heard yet that I've been ill?' she inquired petulantly. 

No; Dora did not think he had. Neither she nor Daddy had seen him. He must have been extra busy. But she would get Daddy to ask him upto supper directly, and tell him all about it. 

'And then, perhaps, ' she said, looking up with a sweet, intenselook--how little Lucy was able to decipher it!--'perhaps he maywrite a letter. '

Lucy was cheered by this suggestion, and sat looking out of windowfor a while, idly watching the passers-by. But she could not letthe one topic that absorbed her mind alone for long, and soon shewas once more questioning Dora in close detail about David Grieve'ssister and all that he had said about her. For, by way of obligingthe child to realise some of the inconvenient burdens andobligations which were at that moment hanging round the youngbookseller's neck, and making the very idea of matrimony ridiculousto him, Dora had repeated to her some of his confidences abouthimself and Louie. Lucy had not taken them very happily. Everythingthat turned up now seemed only to push her further out of sight andmake her more insignificant. She was thirsting, with a woman'snascent passion and a schoolgirl's vanity, to be the centre andheroine of the play; and here she was reduced to the smallest andmeanest of parts--a part that caught nobody's eye, do what shewould. 

Suddenly she broke off what she was saying, and called to Dora:

'_Do_ you see that pair of people, Dora? Come--come at once!What an extraordinary-looking girl!'

Dora turned unwillingly, being absorbed in a golden halo which shehad set herself to finish that day; then she dropped her needle, and pushed her stool back that she might see better. From thecathedral end of Market Place an elderly grey-haired man and ayoung girl were advancing along the pavement towards the Parlour. As they passed, the flower-sellers at the booths were turning tolook at them, some persons in front of them were turning back, anda certain number of errand boys and other loungers were keepingpace with them, observing them. The man leant every now and then ona thick stick he carried, and looked uncertainly from house tohouse. He had a worn, anxious expression, and the helplessmovements of short sight. Whenever he stopped the girl moved onalone, and he had to hurry after her again to catch her up. She, meanwhile, was perfectly conscious that she was being stared at, and stared in return with a haughty composure which seemed to drawthe eyes of the passers-by after it like a magnet. She was verytall and slender, and her unusual height made her garish dress themore conspicuous. The small hat perched on her black hair was allbright scarlet, both the felt and the trimming; under her jacket, which was purposely thrown back, there was a scarlet bodice, andthere was a broad band of scarlet round the edge of her blackdress. 

Lucy could not take her eyes off her. 

'Did you _ever_ see anybody so handsome, Dora? But what afast, horrid creature to dress like that! And just look at her; shewon't wait for the old man, though he's calling to her--she goes onstaring at everybody. They'll have a crowd, presently! Why, they'recoming _here!_'

For suddenly the girl stopped outside the doorway below, andbeckoned imperiously to her companion. She said a few sharp wordsto him, and the pair upstairs felt the swing-door of the restaurantopen and shut. 

Lucy, forgetting her weakness, ran eagerly to the sitting-room doorand listened. 

There was a sound of raised voices below, and then the door at thefoot of the stairs opened, and Daddy was heard shouting. 

'There--go along upstairs. My daughter, she'll speak to you. Anddon't you come back this way--a man can't be feeding Manchester andtaking strangers about, all in the same twinkling of an eye, youknow, not unless he happens to have a few spare bodies handy, whichain't precisely my case. My daughter 'll tell you what you want toknow, and show you out by the private door. Dora!'

Dora stood waiting rather nervously at the sitting-room door. Thegirl came up first, the old man behind her, bewildered and gropinghis way. 

'We're strangers here--we want somebody to show us the way. We'vebeen to the book-shop in Half Street, and they sent us on here. They were just brutes to us at that book-shop, ' said the girl, witha vindictive emphasis and an imperious self-possession which fairlyparalysed Lucy and Dora. Lucy's eyes, moreover, were riveted on herface, on its colour, its fineness of feature, its brilliance andpiercingness of expression. And what was the extraordinary likenessin it to something familiar?

'Why!' said Dora, in a little cry, 'aren't you Mr. David Grieve'ssister?'

For she had traced the likeness before Lucy. 'Oh, it must be!'

'Well, I am his sister, if you want to know, ' said the stranger, looking astonished in her turn. 'He wrote to me to come up. And Ilent the letter to uncle to read--that's his uncle--and he went andlost it somehow, fiddling about the fields while I was putting mythings together. And then we couldn't think of the proper addressthere was in it--only the name of a man Purcell, in Half Street, that David said he'd been with for two years. So we went there toask; and, _my!_--weren't they rude to us! There was an uglyblack man there chivied us out in no time--wouldn't tell usanything. But as I was shutting the door the shopman whispered tome, "Try the Parlour--Market Place. " So we came on here, you see. '

And she stared about her, at the room, and at the girls, taking ineverything with lightning rapidity--the embroidery frame, Lucy'sveil and fashionably cut jacket, the shabby furniture, the queerold pictures. 

'Please come in, ' said Dora civilly, 'and sit down. If you'restrangers here, I'll just put on my hat and take you round. Mr. Grieve's a friend of ours. He's in Potter Street. You'll find himnicely settled by now. This is my cousin, Mr. Purcell's daughter. '

And she ran upstairs, leaving Lucy to grapple with the new-comers. 

The two girls sat down, and eyed each other. Reuben stood patientlywaiting. 

'Is the man at Half Street your father?' asked the new-comer, abruptly. 

'Yes, ' said Lucy, conscious of the strangest mingling of admirationand dislike, as she met the girl's wonderful eyes. 

'Did he and Davy fall out?'

'They didn't get on about Sundays, ' said Lucy, unwillingly, glad ofthe sheltering veil which enabled her to hold her own against thismasterful creature. 

'Is your father strict about chapel and that sort of thing?'

Lucy nodded. She felt an ungracious wish to say as little aspossible. 

David's sister laughed. 

'Davy was that way once--just for a bit--afore he ran away, _I_ knew he wouldn't keep it on. '

Then, with a queer look over her shoulder at her uncle, sherelapsed into silence. Her attention was drawn to Dora's frame, andshe moved up to it, bending over it and lifting the handkerchiefthat Dora had thrown across it. 

'You mustn't touch it!' said Lucy, hastily, provoked, she knew notwhy, by every movement the girl made. 'It's very particular work. '

'I'm used to fine things, ' said the other, scornfully. 'I'm asilk-weaver--that's my trade--all the best brocades, drawing-roomtrains, that style of thing. If you didn't handle _them_carefully, you'd know it. Yes, she's doing it well, ' and thespeaker put her head down and examined the work critically. 'But itmust go fearful slow, compared to a loom. '

'She does it splendidly, ' said Lucy, annoyed; 'she's getting quitefamous for it. That's going to a great church up in London, andshe's got more orders than she can take. '

'Does she get good pay?' asked the girl eagerly. 

'I don't know, ' replied Lucy shortly. 

'Because, if there's good pay, ' said the other, examining the workagain closely, 'I'd soon learn it--why I'd learn it in a week, yousee! If I stay here I shan't get no more silk-weaving. And ofcourse I'll stay. I'm just sick of the country. I'd have come uplong ago if I'd known where to find Davy. '

'I'm ready, ' said Dora in a constrained voice beside her. 

Louie Grieve looked up at her. 

'Oh, you needn't look so glum!--I haven't hurt it. I'm used to goodthings, stuffs at two guineas a yard, and the like of that. Whatmoney do you take a week?' and she pointed to the frame. 

Something in the tone and manner made the question speciallyoffensive. Dora pretended not to hear it. 

'Shall we go now?' she said, hurriedly covering her precious workup from those sacrilegious fingers and putting it away. 

'Lucy, you ought to be going home. '

'Well, I will directly, ' said Lucy. 'Don't you bother about me. '

They all went downstairs. Lucy put up her veil, and pressed herface against the window, watching for them. As she saw them crossMarket Street, she was seized with hungry longing. She wanted to begoing with them, to talk to him herself--to let him see what shehad gone through for him. It would be months and months, perhaps, before they met again. And Dora would see him--his horridsister--everyone but she. He would forget all about her, and shewould be dull and wretched at Hastings. 

But as she turned away in her restless pain, she caught sight ofher changed face in the cracked looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Her white lips tightened. She drew down her veil, and went home. 

Meanwhile Dora led the way to Potter Street. Louie took littlenotice of any attempts to talk to her. She was wholly engaged inlooking about her and at the shops. Especially was she attracted bythe drapers' windows in St. Ann's Square, pronouncing her opinionloudly and freely as to their contents. 

Dora fell meditating. Young Grieve would have his work cut out forhim, she thought, if this extraordinary sister were really going tosettle with him. She was very like him--strangely like him. And yetin the one face there was a quality which was completely lacking inthe other, and which seemed to make all the difference. Dora triedto explain what she meant to herself, and failed. 

'Here's Potter Street, ' she said, as they turned into it. 'Andthat's his shop--that one with the stall outside. Oh, there he is!'

David was in fact standing on his step talking to a customer whowas turning over the books outside. 

Louie looked at him. Then she began to run. Old Grieve too, crimsonall over, and evidently much excited, hurried on. Dora fell behind, her quick sympathies rising. 

'They won't want me interfering, ' she said, turning round. 

'I'll just go back to my work. '

Meanwhile, in David's little back room, which he had already sweptand garnished--for after his letter of the night before, he hadsomehow expected Louie, to rush upon him by the earliest possibletrain--the meeting of these long-sundered persons took place. 

David saw Reuben come in with amazement. 

'Why, Uncle Reuben! Well, I'm real glad to see you. I didn't thinkyou'd have been able to leave the farm. Well, this is my bit of aplace, you see. What do you think of it?'

And, holding his sister by the hand, the young fellow lookedjoyously at his uncle, pride in his new possessions and therecollection of his destitute childhood rushing upon him togetheras he spoke. 

'Aye, it's a fine beginning yo've made, Davy, ' said the old man, cautiously looking round, first at the little room, with its neatbits of new furniture in Louie's honour, and then through the glassdoor at the shop, which was now heavily lined with books. 'Yo worallus a cliver lad, Davy. A' think a'll sit down. '

And Reuben, subsiding into a chair, fell forthwith into anabstraction, his old knotted hands trembling a little on his knees. 

Meanwhile David was holding Louie at arm's-length to look at her. He had kissed her heartily when she came in first, and now he wasall pleasure and excitement. 

''Pon my word, Louie, you've grown as high as the roof! I say, Louie, what's become of that smart pink dress you wore at last"wake, " and of that overlooker, with the moustaches, from NewMills, you walked about with all day?'

She stared at him open-mouthed. 

'What do you mean by that?' she said, quickly. 

David laughed out. 

'And who was it gave Jim Wigson a box on the ears last fifth ofNovember, in the lane just by the Dye-works, eh, Miss Louie?--anddanced with young Redway at the Upper Mill dance, New Year's Day?--and had words with Mr. James at the office about her last "cut, "a fortnight ago--eh, Louie?'

'What _ever_ do you mean?' she said, half crossly, her colourrising. 'You've been spying on me. '

She hated to be mystified. It made her feel herself in some oneelse's power; and the wild creature in her blood grew restive. 

'Why, I've known all about you these four years!' the lad began, with dancing eyes. Then suddenly his voice changed, and dropped: 'Isay, look at Uncle Reuben!'

For Reuben sat bent forward, his light blurred eyes looking outstraight before him, with a singular yet blind intentness, asthough, while seeing nothing round about him, they passed beyondthe walls of the little room to some vision of their own. 

'I don't know whatever he came for, ' began Louie, as they bothexamined him. 

'Uncle Reuben, ' said David, going up to him and touching him on theshoulder, 'you look tired. You'll be wanting some dinner. I'll justsend my man, John Dalby, round the corner for something. '

And he made a step towards the door, but Reuben raised his hand. 

'Noa, noa, Davy! Shut that door, wiltha?'

David wondered, and shut it. 

Then Reuben gave a long sigh, and put his hand deep into his coatpocket, with the quavering, uncertain movement characteristic ofhim. 

'Davy, my lad, a've got summat to say to tha. '

And with many hitches, while the others watched him inastonishment, he pulled out of his pocket a canvas bag and put itdown on an oak stool in front of him. Then he undid the string ofit with his large awkward fingers, and pushed the stool across toDavid. 

'Theer's sixty pund theer, Davy--sixty pund! Yo can keawnt it--it'saw reet. A've saved it for yo, this four year--four year coom lasstMichaelmas Day. Hannah nor nobory knew owt abeawt it. But it'syourn--it's yor share, being t' half o' Mr. Gurney's money. Louie'sshare--that wor different; we had a reet to that, she bein a growingirl, and doin nowt mich for her vittles. Fro the time when yoshould ha had it--whether for wages or for 'prenticin--an yo_could_ na ha it, because Hannah had set hersen agen it, --asaved it for tha, owt o' t' summer cattle moastly, without tellinnobory, so as not to mak words. '

David, bewildered, had taken the bag into his hand. Louie's eyeswere almost out of her head with curiosity and amazement. '_Mr. Gurney's money!_' What did he mean? It was all double-Dutch tothem. 

David, with an effort, controlled himself, being now a man and ahouseholder. He stood with his back against the shop door, his gazefixed on Reuben. 

'Now, Uncle Reuben, I don't understand a bit of what you've beensaying, and Louie don't either. Who's Mr. Gurney? and what's hismoney?'

Unconsciously the young man's voice took a sharp, magisterial note. Reuben gave another long sigh. He was now leaning on his stick, staring at the floor. 

'Noa, --a' know yo doan't understan; a've got to tell tha--'at's t'worst part on 't. An I'm soa bad at tellin. Do yo mind when yorfeyther deed, Davy?' he said suddenly, looking up. 

David nodded, --a red flush of presentiment spread itself over hisface--his whole being hung on Reuben's words. 

'He sent for me afore he deed, ' continued Reuben, slowly; 'an hetowd me aw about his affairs. Six hunderd pund he'd gotsaved--_six-hunderd-pund!_ Aye, it wor a lot for a yoong monlike him, and after sich a peck o' troobles! And he towd me Mr. Gurney ud pay us th' interest for yor bringin-up--th' two on yo; anwhan yo got big, Davy, I wor to tak keawnsel wi Mr. Gurney, an, ifyo chose for t' land, yo were to ha yor money for a farm, when yowor big eneuf, an if yo turned agen th' land, yo wor to be'prenticed to soom trade, an ha yor money when yo wanted it, --Mr. Gurney bein willin. An I promised him I'd deal honest wi hischilder, an--'

Reuben paused painfully. He was wrestling with his conscience, andgroping for words about his wife. The brother and sister satopen-mouthed, pale with excitement, afraid of losing a singlesyllable. 

'An takkin it awthegither, ' he said, bringing each word out with aneffort, 'I doan't think, by t' Lord's mercy, as I've gone soa michastray, though I ha been mich troobled this four year wi thowts o'Sandy--my brither Sandy--an wi not knowin wheer yo wor gone, Davy. Bit yo seem coom to an honest trade--an Louie theer ha larnt atrade too, --an addle't a bit money, --an she's a fine-grown lass--'

He turned a slow, searching look upon her, as though he werepleading a cause before some unseen judge. 

'An theer's yor money, Davy. It's aw th' same, a'm thinkin, whetheryo get it fro me or fro Mr. Gurney. An here--'

He rose, and unbuttoning his inner coat, fumbled in the pocket ofit till he found a letter. 

'An here is a letter for Mr. Gurney. If yo gie me a pen, Davy, I'llwrite in to 't yor reet address, an put it in t' post as I goo tot' station. I took noatice of a box as I coom along. An then--'

He stood still a moment pondering, one outspread hand on theletter. 

'An then theer's nowt moor as a can remember, --an your aunt ull bewearyin; an it's but reet she should know now, at wonst, abeawt t'money a've saved this four year, an t' letter to Mr. Gurney. Younderstan--when yor letter came this mornin--t'mon browt it up toLouie abeawt eight o'clock--she towd me fust out i' th' yard--an Isaid to her, 'Doan't you tell yor aunt nowt abeawt it, an we'st meetat t' station. ' An I made soom excuse to Hannah abeawt gooin owert' Scout after soom beeasts--an--an--Louie an me coom thegither. '

He passed his other hand painfully across his brow. The travail ofexpression, the moral struggle of the last twenty-four hours, seemed to have aged him before them. 

David sat looking at him in a stupefied silence. A light wasbreaking in upon him, transfiguring, combining, interpreting ahundred scattered remembrances of his boyhood. But Louie, theinstant her uncle stopped, broke into a siring of questions, shrilland breathless, her face quite white, her eyes glittering. Reubenseemed hardly to hear her, and in the middle of them David saidsharply, 'Stop that, Louie, and let me talk to Uncle Reuben!'

He drew the letter from under Reuben's fingers, and went on, steadily looking up into his uncle's face:

'You'll let me read it, uncle, and I'll get you a pen directly toput in the address. But first will you tell us about father? Younever did--you nor Aunt Hannah. And about mother, too?'

He said the last words with difficulty, having all his life beenpricked by a certain instinct about his mother, which had, however, almost nothing definite to work upon. Reuben thought a minute, thensat down again patiently. 

'Aye, a'll tell tha. Theer's nobory else can. An tha ought to know, though it'll mebbe be a shock to tha. '

And, with his head resting against his stick, he began to tell thestory of his brother and his brother's marriage as he rememberedit. 

First came the account of Sandy's early struggles, as Sandy himselfhad described them on that visit which he had paid to the farm inthe first days of his prosperity; then a picture of his ultimatesuccess in business, as it had appeared to the dull elder brotherdazzled by the younger's 'cliverness. '

'Aye, he might ha been a great mon; he might ha coom to varra highthings, might Sandy, ' said Reuben solemnly, his voice suddenlyrising, 'bit for th' hizzy that ruined him!'

Both his hearers made an involuntary movement. But Reuben had nowlost all count of them. He was intent on one thing, and capableonly of one thing. They had asked him for his story, and he wastelling it, with an immense effort of mind, recovering the past asbest he could, and feeling some of it over again intensely. 

So when he came to the marriage, he told the story like onethinking it out to himself, with an appalling plainness of phrase. It was, of course, impossible for him to _explain_ Sandy'saberration--there were no resources in him equal to the task. Louise Suveret became in his account what she had always remainedin his imagination since Sandy's employers told him what was knownof her story--a mere witch and devil, sent for his brother'sperdition. All his resentment against his brother's fate had passedinto his hatred of this creature whom he had never seen. Nay, heeven held up the picture of her hideous death before her childrenwith a kind of sinister triumph. So let the ungodly and the harlotperish!

David stood opposite to the speaker all the while, motionless, savefor an uneasy movement here and there when Reuben's words grew morescripturally frank than usual. Louie's face was much more positivethan David's in what it said. Reuben and Reuben's vehemence annoyedand angered her. She frowned at him from under her black brows. Itwas evident that he, rather than his story, excited her. 

'An we buried him aw reet an proper, ' said Reuben at last, wipinghis brow, damp with this unwonted labour of brain and tongue. 'Mr. Gurney he would ha it aw done handsome; and we put him in a cornero' Kensal Green, just as close as might be to whar they'd put herafter th' crowner had sat on her. Yor feyther had left word, an Mr. Gurney would ha nowt different. But it went agen me--aye, it_did_--to leave him wi _her_ after aw!'

And falling suddenly silent, Reuben sat wrapped in a sombre mist ofmemory. 

Then Louie broke out, rolling and unrolling the ribbons of her hatin hot fingers. 

'I don't believe half on't--I don't see how you could know--nor Mr. Gurney either. '

Reuben looked round bewildered. Louie got up noisily, went to thewindow and threw it open, as though oppressed by the narrowness ofthe room. 

'No, I don't, ' she repeated, defiantly--'I don't believe the halfon't. But I'll find out some day. '

She leaned her elbows on the sill, and, looking out into thesqualid bit of yard, threw a bit of grit that lay on the window ata cat that sat sleepily blinking on the flags outside. 

Reuben rose heavily. 

'Gie me pen and ink, Davy, an let me go. '

The young man brought it him without a word. Reuben put in theaddress. 

'Ha yo read it, Davy?'

David started. In his absorption he had forgotten to read it. 

'I wor forced to write it i' the top sheepfold, ' Reuben began toexplain apologetically, then stopped suddenly. Several times he hadbeen on the point of bringing Hannah into the conversation, and hadalways refrained. He refrained now. David read it. It was writtenin Reuben's most laborious business style, and merely requestedthat Mr. Gurney would now communicate with Sandy's son direct onthe subject of his father's money. He had left Needham Farm, andwas old enough to take counsel himself with Mr. Gurney in future asto what should be done with it. 

Reuben looked over David's shoulder as he read. 

'An Louie?' he said uncertainly, at the end, jerking his thumbtowards her. 

'I'm stayin here, ' said Louie peremptorily, still looking out ofwindow. 

Reuben said nothing. Perhaps a shade of relief lightened his oldface. 

When the letter was handed back to him, he sealed it and put itinto his pocket, buttoning up his coat for departure. 

'Yo wor talkin abeawt dinner, Davy--or summat, ' said the old man, courteously. ' Thankee kindly. I want for nowt. I mun get home--Imun get home. '

Louie, standing absorbed in her own excited thoughts, could hardlybe disturbed to say good-bye to him. David, still in a dream, ledhim through the shop, where Reuben peered about him with a certainmomentary curiosity. 

But at the door he said good-bye in a great hurry and ran down thesteps, evidently impatient to be rid of his nephew. 

David turned and came slowly back through the little piled-up shop, where John, all eyes and ears, sat on a high stool in the corner, into the living room. 

As he entered it Louie sprang upon him, and seizing him with bothhands, danced him madly round the little space of vacant boards, till she tripped her foot over the oak stool, and sank down on achair, laughing wildly. 

'How much of that money am I going to have?' she demanded suddenly, her arms crossed over her breast, her eyes brilliant, her wholeaspect radiant and exulting. 

David was standing over the fire, looking down into it, and made noanswer. He had disengaged himself from her as soon as he could. 

Louie waited a while; then, with a contemptuous lip and a shrug ofthe shoulders, she got up. 

'What's the good of worriting about things, I'd like to know? Youwon't do 'em no good. Why don't you think about the money? My word, won't Aunt Hannah be mad! How am I to get my parcels from thestation, and where am I to sleep?'

'You can go and see the house, ' said David, shortly. 'The lodgersupstairs are out, and there's the key of the attic. '

He threw it to her, and she ran off. He had meant to take her intriumphal progress through the little house, and show her all thechanges he had been making for her benefit and his own. But a gulfhad yawned between them. He was relieved to see her go, and when hewas left alone he laid his arms on the low mantelpiece and hid hisface upon them. His mother's story, his father's fate, seemed to beburning into his heart. 

Reuben hurried home through the bleak March evening. In the trainhe could not keep himself still, fidgeting so much that hisneighbours eyed him with suspicion, and gave him a wide berth. Ashe started to walk up to Kinder a thin, raw sleet came on. It drovein his face, chilling him through and through, as he climbed thelonely road, where the black moorland farms lay all about him, seendimly through the white and drifting veil of the storm. But he wasconscious of nothing external. His mind was absorbed by the thoughtof his meeting with Hannah, and by the excited feeling that one ofthe crises of his timid and patient life was approaching. Duringthe last four years they had been very poor, in spite of Mr. Gurney's half-yearly cheque, partly because of the determinationwith which he had stuck to his secret saving. Hannah would thinkthey were going now to be poorer still, but he meant to prove toher that what with Louie's departure and the restoration of theirwhole income to its natural channels, there would not be so muchdifference. He conned his figures eagerly, rehearsing what he wouldsay. For the rest he walked lightly and briskly. The burden of hisbrother's children had dropped away from him, and in those strangeinner colloquies of his he could look Sandy in the face again. 

Had Hannah discovered his flight, he wondered? Some one he wasafraid, might have seen him and Louie at the station and toldtales. He was not sure that one of the Wigsons had not been hangingabout the station yard. And that letter of David's to Louie, whichin his clumsy blundering way he had dropped somewhere about thefarm buildings or the house, and had not been able to find again!It gave him a cold sweat to think that in his absence Hannah mighthave come upon it and drawn her own conclusions. As he followed outthis possibility in his mind, his step quickened till it becamealmost a run. 

Aye, and Hannah had been ailing of late--there had been often'summat wrang wi her. ' Well, they were both getting into years. Perhaps now that Louie with her sharp tongue and aggravating wayswas gone, now that there was only him to do for, Hannah would takethings easier. 

He opened the gate into the farmyard and walked up to the housedoor with a beating heart. It struck him as strange that the frontblinds were not drawn, for it was nearly dark and the storm beatagainst the windows. There was a glimmer of fire in the room, buthe could see nothing clearly. He turned the handle and went intothe passage, making a clatter on purpose. But nothing stirred inthe house, and he pushed open the kitchen door, which stood ajar, filled with a vague alarm. 

Hannah was sitting in the rocking-chair, by the fire. Beside herwas the table partly spread with tea, which, however, had beenuntouched. At Reuben's entrance she turned her head and looked athim fixedly. In the dim light--a mixture of the dying fire and ofthe moonlight from outside--he could not see her plainly, but hefelt that there was something strange, and he ran forward to her. 

'Hannah, are yo bad?--is there owt wrang wi yo?'

Then his seeking eye made out a crumpled paper in her left hand, and he knew at once that it must be Davy's letter. 

Before he could speak again she gave him a push backward with herfree hand, and said with an effort:

'Where's t' gell?'

'Louie? She's left i' Manchester. A've found Davy, Hannah. '

There was a pause, after which he said, trembling:

'Shall I get yo summat, Hannah?'

A hoarse voice came out of the dark:

'Ha doon wi yo! Yo ha been leein to me. Yo wor seen at t' station. '

Reuben sat down. 

'Hannah, ' he said, 'yo mun just listen to me. '

And taking his courage in both hands, he told everything without abreak: how he had been 'feeart' of what Sandy might say to him 'atth' joodgment, ' how he had saved and lied, and how now he had seenDavid, had written to Mr. Gurney, and stopped the cheques for goodand all. 

When he came to the letter to Mr. Gurney, Hannah sat suddenlyupright in her chair, grasping one arm of it. 

'It shall mak noa difference to tha, a tell tha, ' he cried hastily, putting up his hand, fearing he knew not what, 'nobbut a fewshillins ony way. I'll work for tha an mak it up. '

She made a sound which turned him cold with terror--a sound ofbaffled weakness, pain, vindictive passion all in one--then shefell helplessly to one side in her chair, and her grey head droppedon her shoulder. 

In another moment he was crying madly for help in the road outside. For long there was no answer--only the distant roar of the Downfalland the sweep of the wind. Then a labourer, on the path leading tothe Wigsons' farm, heard and ran up. 

An hour later a doctor had been got hold of, and Hannah was lyingupstairs, tended by Mrs. Wigson and Reuben. 

'A paralytic seizure, ' said the doctor to Reuben. 'This woman saysshe's been failing for some time past. She's lived and worked hard, Mr. Grieve; _you_ know that. And there's been some shock. '

Reuben explained incoherently. The doctor did not understand, anddid not care, being a dull man and comparatively new to the place. He did what he could, said she would recover--oh, yes, she wouldrecover; but, of course, she could never be the same woman again. Her working days were done. 

A servant came over from Wigsons' to sit up with Reuben, Mrs. Wigson being too delicate to undertake it. The girl went to liedown first for an hour or two in the room across the landing, andhe was left alone in the gaunt room with his wife. Poor quailingsoul! As he sat there in the windy darkness, hour after hour, open-mouthed and open-eyed, he was steeped in terror--terror of thefuture, of its forlornness, of his own feebleness, of death. Hisheart clave piteously to the unconscious woman beside him, for hehad nothing else. It seemed to him that the Lord had indeed dealthardly with him, thus to strike him down on the day of his greatatonement!

CHAPTER IX

No news of the catastrophe at Needham Farm reached the brother andsister in Potter Street. The use of the pen had always been toReuben one of the main torments and mysteries of life, and he hadbesides all those primitive instincts of silence and concealmentwhich so often in the peasant nature accompany misfortune. Hisbrain-power, moreover, was absorbed by his own calamity and by thechanges in the routine of daily life which his wife's state broughtupon him, so that immediately after his great effort of reparationtowards them--an effort which had taxed the whole man physicallyand mentally--his brother's children and their affairs passed for awhile strangely and completely from his troubled mind. 

Meanwhile, what a transformation he had wrought in their fortunes!When the shock of his parents' story had subsided in him, and thatother shock of jarring temperaments, which the first hour ofLouie's companionship had brought with it, had been for the timeforgotten again in the stress of plans and practical detail, Davidfelt to the full the exhilaration of his new prospects. He hadsprung at a leap, as it seemed to him, from the condition of theboy-adventurer to that of the man of affairs. And as he looked backupon their childhood and realised that all the time, instead ofbeing destitute and dependent orphans, they and their money hadreally been the mainstay of Hannah and the farm, the lad seemed tocast from him the long humiliation of years, to rise in stature anddignity. That old skinflint and hypocrite, Aunt Hannah! With theusual imperfect sympathy of the young he did not much realiseReuben's struggle. But he bore his uncle no grudge for these years'delay. The contrivances and hardships of his Manchester life hadbeen, after all, enjoyment. Without them and the extravagantself-reliance they had developed in him his pride and ambitionwould have run less high. And at this moment the nerve and savourof existence came to him from pride and from ambition. 

But first of all he had to get his money. As soon as Mr. Gurney'sanswer to Reuben's letter came, David took train for London, madehis way to the great West-End shop which had employed his father, and saw the partner who had taken charge of Sandy's money for solong. Mr. Gurney, a shrewd and pompous person, was interested inseeing Grieve's son, inquired what he was about, ran over the termsof a letter to himself, which he took out of a drawer, and then, with a little flourish as to his own deserts in the matter of theguardianship of the money--a flourish neither unnatural norunkindly--handed over to the lad both the letter and a cheque on aLondon bank, took his receipt, talked a little, but with a bluntedmemory, about the lad's father, gave him a little general businessadvice, asked whether his sister was still alive, and bade him goodmorning. Both were satisfied, and the young man left the officewith the cheque lying warm in his pocket, looking slowly andcuriously round the shop where his father had earned it, as hewalked away. 

Outside he found himself close to Trafalgar Square, and, strikingdown to the river, he went to sit on the Embankment and ponder theenclosures which Mr. Gurney had given him. First he took out thecheque, with infinite care, lest the breeze on the Embankmentshould blow it out of his hand, and spread it on his knee. 600 pounds! As he stared at each letter and flourish his eyeswidened anew; and when he looked up across the grey and misty river, the figures still danced before him, and in his exultation hecould have shouted the news to the passers-by. Then, when theprecious paper had been safely stowed away again, he hesitatinglytook out the other--his father's dying memorandum on the subject ofhis children, so he had understood Mr. Gurney. It was old and brown;it had been written with anguish, and it could only be decipheredwith difficulty. There had been no will properly so called. Sandyhad placed more confidence in 'the firm' than in the law, and hadleft behind him merely the general indication of his wishes in thehands of the partner who had specially befriended him. Theprovisions of it were as Sandy had described them to Reuben on hisdeath-bed. Especially did the father insist that there should beno artificial restriction of age. 'I wanted money most when I wasnineteen, and I could have used it just as well then as I could atany later time. '

So he might have been a rich man at least a year earlier. Well, much as he had loathed Purcell, he was glad, on the whole, thatthings were as they were. He had been still a great fool, hereflected, a year ago. 

Then, as to Louie, the letter ran: 'Let Davy have all the money, andlet him manage for her. I won't divide it; he must judge. He maywant it all, and it may be best for them both he should have it. He's got a good heart; I know that; he'll not rob his sister. I layit on him, now I'm dying, to be patient with her, and look afterher. She's not like other children. But it's not her fault; it wasborn in her. Let him see her married to a decent man, and then giveher what's honestly hers. That little lad has nursed me like awoman since I've been ill. He was always a good lad to me, and I'dlike him to know when he's grown up that his father loved him--'

But here the poor laboured scrawl came to an end, save for a fewincoherent strokes. David thrust it back into his pocket. His cheekwas red; his eyes burnt; he sat for long, with his elbows on hisknees, staring at the February river. The choking, passionateimpulse to comfort his father he had felt so often as a child wasthere again, by association, alive and piteous. 

Suddenly he woke up with a start. There, to either hand, lay thebridges, with the moving figures atop and the hurrying river below. And from one of them his mother had leapt when she destroyedherself. In the trance of thought that followed, it was to him asthough he felt her wild nature, her lawless blood, stirring withinhim, and realised, in a fierce, reluctant way, that he was hers aswell as his father's. In a sense, he shared Reuben's hatred; forhe, best of all, knew what she had made his father suffer. Yet thethought of her drew his restless curiosity after it. Where did shecome from? Who were her kindred? From the south of France, Reubenthought. The lad's imagination travelled with difficulty andexcitement to the far and alien land whence half his being hadsprung. A few scraps of poetry and history recurred to him--asingle tattered volume of 'Monte Cristo, ' which he had latelybought with an odd lot at a sale--but nothing that suggested to hisfancy anything like the peasant farm in the Mont Ventoux, withinsight of Arles, where Louise Suveret's penurious childhood had beenactually cradled. 

Two o'clock struck from the belfry of St. Paul's, looming there tohis left in the great bend of the river. At the sound he shook offall his thoughts. Let him see something of London. He had two hoursand a half before his train from Euston. Westminster first--a hastyglance; then an omnibus to St. Paul's, that he might look down uponthe city and its rush; then north. He had a map with him, and hisquick intelligence told him exactly how to use his time to the bestadvantage. Years afterwards he was accustomed to look back on thishour spent on the top of an omnibus, which was making its difficultway to the Bank through the crowded afternoon streets, as one ofthe strong impressions of his youth. Here was one centre of things:Westminster represented another; and both stood for knowledge, wealth, and power. The boy's hot blood rose to the challenge. Hisfoot was on the ladder, and many men with less chances than he hadrisen to the top. At this moment, small Manchester tradesman thathe was, he had the constant presentiment of a wide career. 

That night he let himself into his own door somewhere about nineo'clock. What had Louie been doing with herself all day? She was tohave her first lesson from Dora Lomax; but she must have been dullsince, unless Dora had befriended her. 

To his astonishment, as he shut the door he heard voices inthe kitchen--Louie and _John_. John, the shy, woman-hatingcreature, who had received the news of Louie's expected advent in aspirit of mingled irritation and depression--who, after his firststartled look at her as she passed through the shop, seemed toDavid to have fled the sight of her whenever it was possible!

Louie was talking so fast and laughing so much that neither of themhad heard David's latchkey, and in his surprise the brother stoodstill a moment in the dark, looking round the kitchen-door, whichstood a little open. Louie was sitting by the fire with some yardsof flowered cotton stuff on her knee, at which she was sewing; Johnwas opposite to her on the oak stool, crouched over a box of nails, from which he was laboriously sorting out those of a certain size, apparently at her bidding, for she gave him sharp directions fromtime to time. But his toil was intermittent, for whenever hersallies were louder or more amusing than usual his hand paused, andhe sat staring at her, his small eyes expanding, a sympathetic grinstealing over his mouth. 

It seemed to David that she was describing her lover of the winter;he caught her gesture as she illustrated her performance with JimWigson--the boxing of the amorous lout's ears in the lane by theDye-works. Her beautiful curly black hair was combed to-night intoa sort of wild halo round her brow and cheeks, and in thisarrangement counteracted the one fault of the face--a slightlyexcessive length from forehead to chin. But the brilliance of theeyes, the redness of the thin lips over the small and perfectteeth, the flush on the olive cheek, the slender neck, thedistinction and delicacy of every sweeping line and curve--for thefirst time even David realised, as he stood there in the dark, thathis sister was an extraordinary beauty. Strange! Her manner andvoice had neither natural nor acquired refinement; and yet in themoulding of the head and face there was a dignity and perfection--atouch, as it were, of the grand style--which marked her out in anorthern crowd and riveted the northern eye. Was it the trace ofanother national character, another civilisation, longer descended, less mixed, more deeply graven than ours?

But what was that idiot John doing here?--the young master wantedto know. He coughed loudly and hung up his hat and his stick, tolet them hear that he was there. The pair in the kitchen started. Louie sprang up, flung down her work, and ran out to him. 

'Well, ' said she breathlessly, 'have you got it?'

'Yes. '

She gave a little shriek of excitement. 

'Show it then. '

'There's nothing to show but a cheque. It's all right. Is thereanything for supper?'

'There's some bread and cheese and cold apple-pie in there, ' saidLouie, annoyed with him already; then, turning her head over hershoulder, 'Mr. Dalby, I'll trouble you to get them out. '

With awkward alacrity John flew to do her bidding. When the lad hadransacked the cupboard and placed all the viands it contained onthe table, he looked at David. That young man, with a pucker in hisbrow, was standing by the fire with his hands in his pockets, making short answers to Louie's sharp and numerous questions. 

'That's all I can find, ' said John. 'Shall I run for something?'

'Thanks, ' said David, still frowning, and sat him down, 'that 'lldo. '

Louie made a face at John behind her brother's back. The assistantslowly flushed a deep red. In this young fellow, with his moneybuttoned on his breast, both he and Louie for the first timerealised the master. 

'Well, good night, ' he said, hesitating, 'I'm going. '

David jumped up and went with him into the passage. 

'Look here, ' he said abruptly, 'you and I have got some business totalk to-morrow. I'm not going to keep you slaving here for nothingnow that I can afford to pay you. '

'Are you going to turn me off?' said the other hastily. 

David laughed. The cloud had all cleared from his brow. 

'Don't be such a precious fool!' he said. 'Now be off--and sevensharp. I must go at it like ten horses to-morrow. '

John disappeared into the night, and David went back to his sister. He found her looking red and excited, and sewing energetically. 

'Look here!' she said, lifting a threatening eye to him as heentered the room. 'I'm not going to be treated like a baby. If youdon't tell me all about that money, I'll write to Mr. Gurneymyself. It's part of it mine, and _I'll know_, so there!'

'I'll tell you everything, ' he said quietly, putting a hand intohis coat pocket before he sat down to his supper again. 'There's thecheque--and there's our father's letter, --what Mr. Gurney gave me. There was no proper will--this was instead. '

He pretended to eat, but in reality he watched her anxiously as sheread it. The result was very much what he had expected. She ranbreathlessly through it, then, with a look all flame and fury, shebroke out--

'Up _on_ my word! So you're going to take it all, and I'm to bebeholden to you for every penny. I'd like to see myself!'

'Now look here, Louie, ' he said, firmly, pushing back his chairfrom the table, 'I want to explain things to you. I should like totell you all about my business, and what I think of doing, and thenyou can judge for yourself. I'll not rob you or anyone. '

Whereupon with a fierce gesture she caught up her work again, andhe fell into long and earnest talk, setting his mind to the task. He explained to her that the arrival of this money--thiscapital--made just all the difference, that the whole of it wouldbe infinitely more useful to him than the half, and that heproposed to employ it both for her benefit and his own. He hadalready cleared out the commission agent from the first floor, andmoved down the lodgers--a young foreman and his wife--from theattics to the first-floor back. That left the two attics forhimself and Louie, and gave him the front first-floor room, thebest room in the house, for an extension of stock. 

'Why don't you turn those people out altogether?' said Louie, impatiently. ' They pay very little, and you'll be wanting that roomsoon, very like. '

'Well, I shall get it soon, ' said David bluntly; 'but I can't get itnow. Mrs. Mason's bad; she going to be confined. '

'Well, I dare say she is!' cried Louie. 'That don't matter; sheisn't confined yet. '

David looked at her in amazement. Then his face hardened. 

'I'm not going to turn her out, I tell you, ' he said, andimmediately returned to his statement. Well, there were all sortsof ways in which he might employ his money. He might put up a shedin the back yard, and get a printing-press. He knew of a press anda very decent fount of type, to be had extremely cheap. John was acapital workman, and between them they might reprint some of thescarce local books and pamphlets, which were always sure of a sale. As to his stock, there were endless possibilities. He knew of acollection of rare books on early America, which belonged to agentleman at Cheadle. He had been negotiating about them for sometime. Now he would close at once; from his knowledge of the marketthe speculation was a certain one. He was also inclined to largelyincrease his stock of foreign books, especially in the technicaland scientific direction. There was a considerable opening, hebelieved, for such books in Manchester; at any rate, he meant totry for it. And as soon as ever he could he should learn German. There was a fellow--a German clerk--who haunted the Parlour, whowould teach him in exchange for English lessons. 

So, following a happy instinct, he opened to her all his mind, andtalked to her as though they were partners in a firm. The eventproved that he could have done nothing better. Very early in hisexposition she began to put her wits to his, her irritationdropped, and he was presently astonished at the intelligence sheshowed. Every element almost in the problems discussed wasunfamiliar to her, yet after a while a listener coming in mighthave thought that she too had been Purcell's apprentice, so nimblyhad she gathered up the details involved, so quick she was to seeDavid's points and catch his phrases. If there was no moralfellowship between them, judging from to-night, there bade fair tobe a comradeship of intelligence. 

'There now, ' he said, when he had come to the end of his budget, 'you leave your half of the money to me. Mind, I agree it's yourhalf, and I'll do the best I can with it. I'll pay you interest onit for two years, and I'll keep you. Then we'll see. And if youwant to improve yourself a bit, instead of going to work at once, I'll pay for teachers. And look here, we'll keep good friends overit. '

His keen eyes softened to a charming, half-melancholy smile. Louietook no notice; she was absorbed in meditation; and at the end ofit, she said with a long breath--

'Well, you may have it, and I'll keep an eye on the accounts. Butyou needn't think I'll sit at home "improving" myself: Not I. I'lldo that church-work. That girl gave me a lesson this morning, andI'm going again to-morrow. '

David received the news with satisfaction, remarking heartily thatDora Lomax was a real good sort, and if it weren't for her theParlour and Daddy would soon be in a fix. He told the story of theParlour, dwelling on Dora's virtues. 

'But she is a crank, though!' said Louie. 'Why, if you make freewith her things a bit, or if you call 'em by the wrong names, she'll fly at you! How's anybody to know what they're meant for?'

David laughed, and got up to get some books he was repairing. As hemoved away he looked back a moment. 

'I say, Louie, ' he began, hesitating, 'that fellow John's worked forme like a dozen, and has never taken a farthing from me. Don't yougo and make a fool of him. '

A flush passed over Louie's face. She lifted her hand and tuckedaway some curly ends of long hair that had fallen on her shoulders. 

'He's like one of Aunt Hannah's suet rolies, ' she said, after aminute, with a gleam of her white teeth. 'Seems as if some one hadtied him in a cloth and boiled him that shape. '

Neither of them cared to go to bed. They sat up talking. David wasmending, sorting, and pricing a number of old books he had boughtfor nothing at a country sale. He knew enough of bookbinding to dothe repairing with much skill, showing the same neatness of fingerin it that he had shown years ago in the carving of toy boats andwater-wheels. Louie went on with her work, which proved to be acurtain for her attic. She meant to have that room nice, and shehad been out buying a few things, whereby David understood--asindeed Reuben had said--that she had some savings. Moreover, withregard to certain odd jobs of carpentering, she had already pressedJohn into her service, which explained his lingering after hours, and his eagerness among the nails. As to the furniture David hadbought for her, on which, in the intervals of his busy days, he hadspent some time and trouble, and of which he was secretly proud, humble and cheap as it was--she took it for granted. He could notremember that she had said any 'thank you's' since she came. 

Still, youth and comradeship were pleasant. The den in which theysat was warm with light and fire, and was their own. Louie'sexultation, too, in their change of fortune, which flashed out ofher at every turn, was infectious, and presently his spirits rosewith hers, and the two lost themselves in the excitement of largeschemes and new horizons. 

After a time he found himself comparing notes with her as to thatfar-off crisis of his running away. 

'I suppose you heard somehow about Jim Wigson and me?' he askedher, his pulse quickening after all these years. 

She nodded with a little grin. He had already noticed, by the way, that she, while still living among the moors, had almost shakenherself free of the Kinder dialect, whereas it had taken quite ayear of Manchester life to rub off his own Doric. 

'Well, you didn't imagine'--he went on--'I was going to stop afterthat? I could put a knife between Jim's ribs now when I think ofit!'

And, pushing his book away from him, he sat recalling that longpast shame, his face, glowing with vindictive memory, framed in hishands. 

'I don't see, though, what you sneaked off for like that after allyou'd promised me, ' she said with energy. 

'No, it was hard on you, ' he admitted. 'But I couldn't think of anyother way out. I was mad with everybody, and just wanted to cut andrun. But before I hit on that notion about Tom'(he had just beenexplaining to her in detail, not at all to her satisfaction, hisdevice for getting regular news of her)'I used to spend half mytime wondering what you'd do. I thought, perhaps, you'd run awaytoo, and that would have been a kettle of fish. '

'I did run away, ' she said, her wild eyes sparkling--'twice. '

'Jiminy!' said David with a schoolboy delight, 'let's hear!'

Whereupon she took up her tale and told him a great deal that wasstill quite unknown to him. She told it in her own way withcharacteristic blindnesses and hardnesses, but the truth of it wasthis. The very day after David's departure she too had run away, inspite of the fact that Hannah was keeping her in something verylike imprisonment. She supposed that David had gone to Manchester, and she meant to follow him there. But she had been caught beggingthe other side of Glossop by a policeman, who was a native ofClough End and knew all about her. 

'He made me come along back, but he must have got the mark on hiswrist still where I bit him, I should think, ' remarked Miss Louie, with a satisfaction untouched apparently by the lapse of time. 

The next attempt had been more serious. It was some monthsafterwards, and by this time she was in despair about David, andhad made up her passionate mind that she would never see him again. But she loathed Hannah more and more, and at last, in the middle ofa snowy February, the child determined to find her way over thePeak into the wild valley of the Woodlands, and so to Ashopton andSheffield, in which last town she meant to go to service. But inthe effort to cross the plateau of the Peak she very nearly losther life. Long before she came in sight of the Snake Inn, on theWoodlands side, she sank exhausted in the snow, and, but for someFrimley shepherds who were out after their sheep, she would havedrawn her last breath in that grim solitude. They carried her downto Frimley and dropped her at the nearest shelter, which happenedto be Margaret Dawson's cottage. 

Margaret was then in the first smart of her widowhood. 'Lias wasjust dead, and she was withering physically and mentally under theheart-hunger of her loss. The arrival of the pallid, half-consciouschild--David's sister, with David's eyes--for a time distracted andappeased her. She nursed the poor waif, and sent word to NeedhamFarm. Reuben came for the girl, and Margaret, partly out ofcompassion, partly out of a sense of her own decaying strength, bribed her to go back home by the promise of teaching her thesilk-weaving. 

Louie learnt the trade with surprising quickness, and as she shotup in stature and her fingers gained in cunning and rapidity, Margaret became more bowed, helpless and 'fond, ' until at lastLouie did everything, brought home the weft and warp, set it up, worked off the 'cuts, ' and took them to the warehouse in Clough Endto be paid; while Margaret sat in the chimney corner, pininginwardly for 'Lias and dropping deeper day by day into the gulf ofage. By this time of course various money arrangements had beenmade between them, superintended by Margaret's brother, a weaver inthe same village who found it necessary to keep a very sharp eye onthis girl-apprentice whom Margaret had picked up. Of late Louie hadbeen paying Margaret rent for the loom, together with a certainpercentage on the weekly earnings, practically for 'goodwill. ' Andon this small sum the widow had managed to live and keep her home, while Louie launched gloriously into new clothes, started asavings-bank book, and snapped her fingers for good and all atHannah, who put up with her, however, in a sour silence because ofMr. Gurney's cheques. 

'And Margaret can't do _anything_ for herself now?' askedDavid. He had followed the story with eagerness. For years theremembrance had rankled in his mind how during his last months atKinder, when 'Lias was dying, and the old pair were more in wantthan ever of the small services he had been accustomed to renderthem, he had forgotten and neglected his friends because he hadbeen absorbed in the excitements of 'conversion, ' so that when TomMullins had told him in general terms that his sister Louie wassupporting both Margaret and herself, the news had soothed aremorse. 

'I should just think not!' said Louie in answer to his question. 'She's gone most silly, and she hasn't got the right use of herlegs either. '

'Poor old thing!' said David softly, falling into a dream. He wasthinking of Margaret in her active, happy days when she used tobake scones for him, or mend his clothes, or rate him for'worriting' 'Lias. Then wakening up he drew the book he was bindingtowards him again. 'She must have been precious glad to have you todo for her, Louie, ' he said contentedly. 

'Do for her?' Louie opened her eyes. 'As if I could be worrited withher! I had my work to do, thank you. There was a niece used to comein and see to her. She used to get in my way dreadful sometimes. She'd have fits of thinking she could work the loom again, and I'dhave to keep her away--regular _frighten_ her. '

David started. 

'Who'll work the loom now?' he asked; his look and tone altering tomatch hers. 

'I'm sure I don't know, ' said Louie, carelessly. 'Very like she'llnot get anyone. The work's been slack a long while. '

David suddenly drew back from his bookbinding. 

'When did you let her know, Louie--about me?' he asked quickly. 

'Let her know? Who was to let her know? Your letter came eighto'clock and our train started half-past ten. I'd just time to pitchmy things together and that was about all. '

'And you never sent, and you haven't written?'

'You leave me alone, ' said the girl, turning instantly sulky underhis tone and look. 'It's nowt to you what I do. '

'Why!' he said, his voice shaking, 'she'd be waiting andwaiting--and she's got nothing else to depend on. '

'There's her brother, ' said Louie angrily, 'and if he won't takeher, there's the workhouse. They'll take her there fast enough, andshe won't know anything about it. '

'The _workhouse_!' cried David, springing up, incensed pastbearing by her callous way. 'Margaret that took you in out of thesnow!--you said it yourself. And you--you'd not lift a finger--notyou--you'd not even give her notice--"chuck her into theworkhouse--that's good enough for her!" It's _vile_, --that'swhat it is!'

He stood, choked by his own wrath, eyeing her fiercely--a youngthunder god of disdain and condemnation. 

Louie too got up--gathering up her work round her--and gave himback his look with interest before she flung out of the room. 

'Keep a civil tongue in your head, sir, or I'll let you know, ' shecried. 'I'll not be called over the coals by you nor nobody. I'll dowhat I _please_, --and if you don't like it you can do theother thing--so there--now you know!'

And with a nod of the utmost provocation and defiance she bangedthe door behind her and went up to bed. 

David flung down the pen with which he had been lettering his bookson the table, and, drawing a chair up to the fire, he sat moodilystaring into the embers. So it was all to begin again--the longwrangle and jar of their childhood. Why had he broken silence andtaken this burden once more upon his shoulders? He had a moment ofpassionate regret. It seemed to him more than he could bear. Nogratitude, no kindness; and this fierce tongue!

After a while he fetched pen and paper and began to write on hisknee, while his look kindled again. He wrote to Margaret, a letterof boyish effusion and affection, his own conscience quickened topassion by Louie's lack of conscience. He had never forgotten her, he said, and he wished he could see her again. She must write, orget some one to write for her--and tell him what she was going todo now that Louie had left her. He had been angry with Louie forcoming away without sending word. But what he wanted to say wasthis: if Margaret could get no one to work the loom, he, David, would pay her brother four shillings a week, for six monthscertain, towards her expenses if he would take her in and lookafter her. She must ask somebody to write at once and say what wasto be done. If her brother consented to take her, David would senda post-office order for the first month at once. He was doing wellin his business, and there would be no doubt about the payments. 

He made his proposal with a haste and impulsiveness very unlike thecool judgment he had so far shown in his business. It neveroccurred to him to negotiate with the brother who might be quitewell able to maintain his sister without help. Besides heremembered him as a hard man of whom both Margaret and 'Lias--soft, sensitive creatures--were both more or less afraid. No, thereshould be no doubt about it--not a day's doubt, if he could helpit! He could help, and he would; and if they asked him more hewould give it. Nearly midnight! But if he ran out to the GeneralPost Office it would be in time. 

When he had posted it and was walking home, his anger was all gone. But in its stead was the smart of a baffled instinct--the hungerfor sympathy, for love, for that common everyday life of theaffections which had never been his, while it came so easily toother people. 

In his chafing distress he felt the curb of something unknownbefore; or, rather, what had of late taken the pleasant guise ofkinship and natural affection assumed to-night another and asterner aspect, and in this strait of conduct, that sheer'imperative' which we carry within us made itself for the firsttime heard and realised. 

'I have done my duty and must abide by it. I _must_ bear withher and look after her. '

Why?

'Because my father laid it on me?'--

And because there is a life within our life which urges and presses?--because we are 'not our own'? But this is an answer which impliesa whole theology. And at this moment of his life David had not aparticle or shred of theology about him. Except, indeed, that, likeVoltaire, he was graciously inclined to think a First Causeprobable. 

Next day this storm blew over, as storms do. Louie came down earlyand made the porridge for breakfast. When David appeared shecarried things off with a high hand, and behaved as if nothing hadhappened; but anyone accustomed to watch her would have seen acertain quick nervousness in her black, wild bird's eyes. As forDavid, after a period of gruffness and silence, he passed bydegrees into his usual manner. Louie spent the day with Dora, andhe went off to Cheadle to conclude the purchase of that collectionof American books he had described to Louie. But first, on his way, he walked proudly into Heywood's bank and opened an account there, receiving the congratulations of an old and talkative cashier, whoalready knew the lad and was interested in his prospects, with thecoolness of one who takes good fortune as his right. 

In the afternoon he was busy in the shop--not too busy, however, tonotice John. What ailed the lad? While he was inside, as soon asthe door did but creak in the wind he sprang to open it, but forthe most part he preferred to stand outside watching the stall andthe street. When Louie appeared about five o'clock--for her hourswith Dora were not yet regular--he forthwith became her slave. Sheset him to draw up the fire while she got the tea, and then, without taking any notice of David, she marched John upstairs tohelp her hang her curtains, lay her carpet, and nail up thecoloured fashion plates and newspaper prints of royalties orbeauties with which she was adorning the bare walls of the attic. 

When all her additions had been made to David's original stock;when the little deal dressing-table and glass had been draped inthe cheapest of muslins over the pinkest of calicoes; when theflowery curtains had been tied back with blue ribbons; when thechina vases on the mantelpiece had been filled with nodding plumesof dyed grasses, mostly of a rosy red; and a long glass in asomewhat damaged condition, but still presenting enough surface toenable Miss Louie to study herself therein from top to toe, hadbeen propped against the wall; there was and could be nothing inthe neighbourhood of Potter Street, so John reflected, as hefurtively looked about him, to vie with the splendours of MissGrieve's apartment. There was about it a sensuousness, a deliberatequest of luxury and gaiety, which a raw son of poverty could feelthough he could not put it into words. No Manchester girl he hadever seen would have cared to spend her money in just this way. 

'Now that's real nice, Mr. Dalby, and I'm just obliged to you, 'said Louie, with patronising emphasis, as she looked round upon hislabours. 'I do like to get a man to do things for you--he's got somestrength in him--not like a gell!'

And she looked down at herself and at the long, thin-fingered handagainst her dress, with affected contempt. John looked at her too, but turned his head away again quickly. 

'And yet you're pretty strong too, Miss, ' he ventured. 

'Well, perhaps I am, ' she admitted; 'and a good thing too, when youcome to think of the rough time I had over there'--and she jerkedher head behind her--'ever since Davy ran away from me. '

'Ran away from you, Miss?'

She nodded, pressing her lips together with the look of one whokeeps a secret from the highest motives. But she brought twobeautiful plaintive eyes to bear on John, and he at once felt surethat David's conduct had been totally inexcusable. 

Then suddenly she broke into a laugh. She was sitting on the edgeof the bed, swinging her feet lightly backwards and forwards. 

'Look here!' she said, dropping her voice, and looking round at thedoor. 'Do you know a lot about Davy's affairs?--you 're a greatfriend of his, aren't you?'

'I s'pose so, ' said the lad, awkwardly. 

'Well, has he been making up to anybody that you know of?'

John's invisible eyebrows stretched considerably. He was soastonished that he did not readily find an answer. 

'Why, of course, I mean, ' said Louie, impatiently, 'is he _inlove_ with anybody?'

'Not that I know of, Miss. '

'Well, then, there's somebody in love with _him_, ' said Louie, maliciously; 'and some day, Mr. Dalby, if we get a chance, perhapsI'll tell you all about it. '

The charming confidential smile she threw him so bewildered the ladthat he hardly knew where he was. 

But an exasperated shout of 'John' from the stairs recalled him, and he rushed downstairs to help David deal with a cargo of booksjust arrived. 

That evening David ran up to the Parlour for half an hour, to havea talk with Daddy and find out what Dora thought of Louie. He hadsent a message by Louie about Reuben's revelations, and it occurredto him that since Daddy had not been to look him up since, thatincalculable person might be offended that he had not brought hisgreat news in person. Besides, he had a very strong curiosity toknow what had happened after all to Lucy Purcell, and whetheranything had been commonly observed of Purcell's demeanour underthe checkmate administered to him. For the past few days he hadbeen wholly absorbed in his own affairs, and during the previousweek he had seen nothing of either Daddy or Dora, except that at acasual meeting in the street with Daddy that worthy had describedhis attack on Purcell with a gusto worthy of his Irish extraction. 

He found the restaurant just shutting, and Daddy apparently on thewing for the 'White Horse' parlour, to judge from the relief whichshowed in Dora's worn look as she saw her father lay down his hatand stick again and fall 'chaffing' with David. 

For, with regard to David's change of position, the landlord of theParlour was in a very testy frame of mind. 

'Six hundred pounds!' he growled, when the young fellow sittingcross-legged by the fire had made an end of describing to them bothhis journey to London. 'H'm, _your_ fun's over: any fool can doon six hundred pounds!'

'Thank you, Daddy, ' said the lad, with a sarcastic lip. 'As for you, I wonder _you_ have the face to talk! Who's coining moneyhere, I should like to know?'

Dora looked up with a start. Her father met her look with a certainhostility and an obstinate shake of his thin shoulders. 

'Davy, me boy, you're that consated by now, you'll not be fortaking advice. But I'll give it you, bedad, to take or to leave!Never pitch your tent, sir, where you can't strike it when you wantto! But there's where your beastly money comes in. Nobody need lookto you now for any comprehension of the finer sentiments of man. '

'What do you mean, Daddy?'

'Never you mind, ' said the old vagrant, staring sombrely at thefloor--the spleen in person. 'Only I want my _freedom_, I tellyou--and a bit of air, sometimes--and by gad I'll have 'em!'

And throwing back his grey head with a jerk he fixed an angry eyeon Dora. Dora had grown paler, but she said nothing; her fingerswent steadily on with her work; from early morning now till latenight neither they nor she were ever at rest. After a minute'ssilence Lomax walked to the door, flung a good-night behind him anddisappeared. 

Dora hastily drew her hand across her eyes, then threaded herneedle as though nothing had happened. But David was perplexed andsorry. How white and thin she looked, to be sure! That old lunaticmust be worrying her somehow. 

He moved his chair nearer to Dora. 

'Is there anything wrong, Miss Dora?' he asked her, dropping hisvoice. 

She looked up with a quick gratitude, his voice and expressionputting a new life into her. 

'Oh! I don't know, ' she said, gently and sadly. 'Father's been veryrestless these last few weeks. I can't keep him at home. And I'mnot always dull like this. I've done my best to cheer him up. And Idon't think there's much amiss with the Parlour--yet--only theoutgoings are so large every day. I'm always feeart--'

She paused, and a visible tremor ran through her. David's quick eyeunderstood the signs of strain and fatigue, and he felt a brotherlypity for her--a softer, more normal feeling than Louie had evercalled out in him. 

'I say, ' he said heartily, 'if there's anything I can do, you'll letme know, wont you?'

She smiled at him, and then turned to her work again in a hurry, afraid of her own eyes and lips, and what they might be saying. 

'Oh! I dare say I fret myself too much, ' she said, with the tone ofone determined to be cheered. And, by way of protecting her ownquivering heart, she fell upon the subject of Louie. She showed thebrother some of Louie's first attempts--some of the stitches shehad been learning. 

'She's that quick!' she said, wondering. 'In a few days I'm going totrust her with that, ' and she pointed to a fine old piece ofVenetian embroidery, which had to be largely repaired before itcould be made up into an altar-cloth and presented to St. Damian'sby a rich and devoted member of the congregation. 

'Does she get in your way?' the brother inquired. 

'N-o, ' she said in a low voice, paying particular attention to acomplicated stitch. 'She'll get used to me and the work soon. She'llmake a first-rate hand if she's patient a bit. They'll be glad totake her on at the shop. '

'But you'll not turn her out? You'll let her work here, alongsideof you?' said the young man eagerly. He had just met Louie, in thedark, walking up Market Street with a seedy kind of gentleman, whohe had reason to know was a bad lot. John was off his head abouther, and no longer of much use to anybody, and in these few daysother men, as it seemed to him, had begun to hang about. Thedifficulties of his guardianship were thickening upon him, and heclung to Dora's help. 

'No; I'll not turn her out. She may work here if she wants to, 'said Dora, with the same slowness. 

And all the time she was saying to herself passionately that, ifLouie Grieve had not been his sister, she should _never_ haveset foot in that room again! In the two days they had been togetherLouie had outraged almost every feeling the other possessed. Andthere was a burning dread in Dora's mind that even the secret ofher heart of hearts had been somehow discovered by the girl'shawk-like sense. But she had promised to help him, and she would. 

'You must let me know what I owe you for teaching her andintroducing her, ' said David firmly. 'Yes, you must, Miss Dora. It'sbusiness, and you mustn't make any bones about it. A girl doesn'tlearn a trade and get an opening found her for nothing. '

'Oh no, nonsense!' she said quickly, but with decision equal to hisown. 'I won't take anything. She don't want much teaching; she's soclever; she sees a thing almost before the words are out of yourmouth. Look here, Mr. Grieve, I want to tell you about Lucy. '

She looked up at him, flushing. He, too, coloured. 

'Well, ' he said; 'that's what I wanted to ask you. '

She told him the whole story of Lucy's flight from her father, ofher illness and departure, of the probable stepmother. 

'Old brute!' said David between his teeth. 'I say, Miss Dora, cannothing be done to make him treat her decently?'

His countenance glowed with indignation and disgust. Dora shook herhead sadly. 

'I don't see what anyone can do; and the worst of it is she'll besuch a long while getting over it. I've had a letter from her thismorning, and she says the Hastings doctor declares she must staythere a year in the warm and not come home at all, or she'll begoing off in a decline. I know Lucy gets nervous about herself, butit do seem bad. '

David sat silent, lost in a medley of feelings, most of themunpleasant. Now that Lucy Purcell was at the other end of England, both her service to him and his own curmudgeon behaviour to herloomed doubly large. 

'I say, will you give me her address?' he said at last. 'I've got asmart book I've had bound for her. I'd like to send it her. '

Dora went to the table and wrote it for him. Then he got up to go. 

'Upon my word, you do look tired, ' he broke out. 'Can't you go tobed? It is hard lines. '

Which last words applied to that whole situation of hers with herfather which he was beginning dimly to discern. In his boyishadmiration and compassion he took both her hands in his. Dorawithdrew them quickly. 

'Oh, I'll pull through!' she said, simply, and he went. 

When she had closed the door after him she stood looking at theclock with her hands clasped in front of her. 

'How much longer will father be?' she said, sighing. 'Oh, I think Itold him all Lucy wanted me to say; I think I did. '

CHAPTER X

Three or four months passed away. During that period David had builtup a shed in his back yard and had established a printing-pressthere, with a respectable, though not extensive, fount oftype--bought, all of it, secondhand, and a bargain. John andhe spent every available moment there, and during their firstexperiments would often sit up half the night working off thesheets of their earliest productions, in an excitement which tookno count of fatigue. They began with reprinting some scarce localtracts, with which they did well. Then David diverged into aRadical pamphlet or two on the subject of the coming EducationBill, finding authors for them among the leading ministers of thetown; and these timely wares, being freely pushed on the stall, onthe whole paid their expenses, with a little profit to spare--thelabour being reckoned at nothing. And now David was beginning tocherish the dream of a new history of Manchester, for which amonghis own collections he already possessed a great deal of freshmaterial. But that would take time and money. He must push hisbusiness a bit further first. 

That business, however, was developing quite as rapidly as the twopairs of arms could keep pace with it. Almost everything the youngfellow touched succeeded. He had instinct, knowledge, a growingtact, and an indomitable energy, and these are the qualities whichmake, which are in themselves, success. The purchase of thecollection at Cheadle, bearing on the early history of Americanstates and towns, not only turned out well in itself, but broughthim to the notice of a big man in London, who set the clever anddaring beginner on several large quests both in Lancashire andYorkshire by which both profited considerably. In another directionhe was extending his stock of foreign scientific and technicalbooks, especially such as bore upon the industries of NorthernEngland. Old Barbier, who took a warmer and warmer interest in hispupil's progress, kept him constantly advised as to French booksthrough old friends of his own in Paris, who were glad to do theexile a kindness. 

'But why not run over to Paris for yourself, form some connections, and look about you?' suggested Barbier. 

Why not, indeed? The young man's blood, quick with curiosity andadventure, under all his tradesman's exterior, leapt at thethought. But prudence restrained him for the present. 

As for German books, he was struggling with the language, andfeeling his way besides through innumerable catalogues. How hefound time for all the miscellaneous acquisitions of these monthsit would be difficult to say. But whether in his free times or intrade-hours he was hardly ever without a book or a catalogue besidehim, save when he was working the printing press; and, although hisyouth would every now and then break out against the confinement heimposed upon it, and drive him either to long tramps over the moorson days when the spring stirred in the air, or to a spell oftheatre-going, in which Louie greedily shared, yet, on the whole, his force of purpose was amazing, and the success which it broughtwith it could only be regarded as natural and inevitable. He wasbeginning to be well known to the old-established men in his ownbusiness, who could not but show at times some natural jealousy ofso quick a rise. The story of his relations to Purcell spread, andthe two were watched with malicious interest at many a book-sale, when the nonchalant self-reliance and prosperous look of theyounger drove the elder man again and again into futile attempts toinjure and circumvent him. It was noticed that never till now hadPurcell lost his head with a rival. 

Nevertheless, the lad had far fewer enemies than might have beenexpected. His manner had always been radiantly self-confident; butthere was about him a conspicuous element of quick feeling, of warmhumanity, which grew rather than diminished with his success. Hewas frank, too, and did not try to gloss over a mistake or afailure. Perhaps in his lordly way he felt he could afford himselfa few now and then, he was so much cleverer than his neighbours. 

Upon no one did David's development produce more effect than uponMr. Ancrum. The lame, solitary minister, who only got through hisweek's self-appointed tasks at a constant expense of bodilytorment, was dazzled and bewildered by the spectacle of so muchvitality spent with such ease and impunity. 

'How many years of Manchester must one give him?' said Ancrum tohimself one night, when he was making his way home from a readingof the 'Electra' with David. 'That six hundred pounds has quickenedthe pace amazingly! Ten years, perhaps. Then London, and anythingyou like. Bookselling slips into publishing, and publishing takes aman into another class, and within reach of a hundred newpossibilities. Some day I shall be bragging of having taught him!Taught him! He'll be turning the tables on me precious soon. Caughtme out twice to-night, and got through the tough bit of the chorusmuch better than I did. How does he do it?--and with that mountainof other things on his shoulders! There's one speck in the fruit, however, as far as I can see-Miss Louie!'

From the first moment of his introduction to her, Ancrum had takenparticular notice of David's handsome sister, who, on her side, hadtreated her old minister and teacher with a most thoroughgoingindifference. He saw that now, after some three months of lifetogether, the brother and sister had developed separate existences, which touched in two points only--a common liking for Dora Lomax, and a common keenness for business. 

Here, in this matter of business, they were really at one. Davidkept nothing from her, and consulted her a good deal. She had thesame shrewd head that he had, and as it was her money as well ashis that was in question she was determined to know and tounderstand what he was after. Anybody who had come upon the pair onthe nights when they made up their accounts, their dark headstouching under the lamp, might have gone away moralising on thecharms of fraternal affection. 

And all the while David had once more tacitly given up the attempteither to love her or to control her. How indeed could he controlher? He was barely two years older, and she had a will of iron. Shemade disreputable friends whom he loathed the sight of. But all hecould do was to keep them out of the house. She led John by thistime a dog's life. From the temptress she had become the tease andtyrant, and the clumsy fellow, consumed with feverish passion, slaved for her whenever she was near him with hardly the reward ofa kind look or a civil word in a fortnight. David set his teeth andtried to recover possession of his friend. And as long as they twowere at the press or in the shop together alone, John was often hisold self, and would laugh out in the old way. But no sooner didLouie appear than he followed her about like an animal, and Davidcould make no more of him. Whenever any dispute, too, arose betweenthe brother and sister, he took her part, whatever it might be, with an acrimony which pushed David's temper hard. 

Yet, on the whole, so Ancrum thought, the brother showed awonderful patience. He was evidently haunted by a sense ofresponsibility towards his sister, and, at the same time, bothtormented and humiliated by his incompetence to manage or influenceher. It was curious, too, to watch how by antagonism and by theconstant friction of their life together, certain qualities in herdeveloped certain others in him. Her callousness, for instance, didbut nurture a sensitive humanity in him. She treated the lodgers inthe first pair back with persistent indifference and evenbrutality, seeing that Mrs. Mason was a young, helpless creatureapproaching every day nearer to a confinement she regarded withterror, and that a little common kindness from the only other womanin the house could have softened her lot considerably. But David'sbooks were stacked about in awkward and inconvenient places waitingfor the Masons' departure, and Louie had no patience withthem--with the wife at any rate. It once or twice occurred to Davidthat if the husband, a good-looking fellow and a very hard-workedshopman, had had more hours at home, Louie would have tried herblandishments upon him. 

He on his side was goaded by Louie's behaviour into an unusualcomplaisance and liberality towards his tenants. Louie oncecontemptuously told him he would make a capital 'general help. ' Hewas Mrs. Mason's coal-carrier and errand-boy already. 

In the same way Louie beat and ill-treated a half-starvedcollie--one of the short-haired black sort familiar to the shepherdof the north, and to David himself in his farm days--which wouldhaunt the shop and kitchen. Whereupon David felt all his heart melttowards the squalid, unhandsome creature. He fed and cherished it;it slept on his bed by night and followed him by day, he all thewhile protecting it from Louie with a strong hand. And the moreevil was the eye she cast upon the dog, who, according to her, possessed all the canine vices, the more David loved it, and themore Tim was fattened and caressed. 

In another direction, too, the same antagonism appeared. Thesister's license of speech and behaviour towards the men who becameher acquaintances provoked in the brother what often seemed toAncrum--who, of course, remembered Reuben, and had heard many talesof old James Grieve, the lad's grandfather--a sort of Puritanreaction, the reaction of his race and stock against 'lewdness. 'Louie's complete independence, however, and the distance shepreserved between his amusements and hers, left David no otherweapon than sarcasm, which he employed freely. His fine sensitivemouth took during these weeks a curve half mocking, half bitter, which changed the whole expression of the face. 

He saw, indeed, with great clearness after a month or so thatLouie's wildness was by no means the wildness of an ignorantinnocent, likely to slip unawares into perdition, and that, whileshe had a passionate greed for amusement and pleasure, and a blankabsence of principle, she was still perfectly alive to the risks oflife, and meant somehow both to enjoy herself and to steer herselfthrough. But this gradual perception--that, in spite of her mode ofkilling spare time, she was not immediately likely to take anyfatal false step, as he had imagined in his first dread--did butincrease his inward repulsion. 

A state of feeling which was the more remarkable because hehimself, in Ancrum's eyes, was at the moment in a temper of moralrelaxation and bewilderment! His absorption in George Sand, andthrough her in all the other French Romantics whose books he couldeither find for himself or borrow from Barbier, was carrying aferment of passion and imagination through all his blood. Mostsocial arrangements, including marriage, seemed to have become openquestions to him. Why, then, this tone towards Louie and herfriends? Was it that, apart from the influence of heredity, theyoung fellow's moral perception at this time was not ethical atall, but aesthetic--a matter of taste, of the presence or absenceof certain ideal and poetic elements in conduct?

At any rate his friendship for old Barbier drew closer and closer, and Ancrum, who had begun to feel a lively affection for him, couldsee but little of him. 

As to Barbier, it was a significant chance which had thrownhim across David's path. In former days this lively Frenchmanhad been a small Paris journalist, whom the _coup d'etat_ hadstruck down with his betters, and who had escaped to Englandwith one suit of clothes and eight francs in his pocket. Hereminded himself on landing of a cousin of his mother's settledas a clerk in Manchester, found his way northwards, and hadnow, for some seventeen years, been maintaining himself in thecotton capital, mainly by teaching, but partly by a number ofsmall arts--ornamental calligraphy, _menu_-writing, and thelike--too odd and various for description. He was a fanatic, a Red, much possessed by political hatreds which gave savour to anexistence otherwise dull and peaceable enough. Religious beliefswere very scarce with him, but he had a certain literary creed, thecreed of 1830, when he had been a scribbler in the train of VictorHugo, which he did his best to put into David. 

He was a formidable-looking person, six feet in height, and broadin proportion, with bushy white eyebrows, and a mouth made hideousby two projecting teeth. In speech he hated England and all herways, and was for ever yearning towards the misguided and yetunequalled country which had cast him out. In heart he wasperfectly aware that England is free as not even Republican Franceis free; and he was also sufficiently alive to the fact that he hadmade himself a very tolerable niche in Manchester, and waspleasantly regarded there--at least, in certain circles--as anoracle of French opinion, a commodity which, in a great commercialcentre, may at any time have a cash value. He could, in truth, have long ago revisited _la patrie_ had he had a mind, forgovernments are seldom vindictive in the case of people who canclearly do them no harm. This, however, was not at all his ownhonest view of the matter. In the mirror of the mind he saw himselfperpetually draped in the pathos of exile and the dignity ofpersecution, and the phrases by which he was wont to impress thisinward vision on the brutal English sense had become, in the courseof years, an effective and touching habit with him. 

David had been Barbier's pupil in the first instance at one of theclasses of the Mechanics' Institute. Never in Barbier's memory hadany Manchester lad so applied himself to learn French before. Andwhen the boy's knowledge of the Encyclopaedists came out, and heone day put the master right in class on some points connected withDiderot's relations to Rousseau, the ex-journalist gaped withastonishment, and then went home and read up his facts, halfenraged and half enraptured. David's zeal piqued him, made him abetter Frenchman and a better teacher than he had been for years. He was a vain man, and David's capacities put him on his mettle. 

Very soon he and the lad had become intimate. He had described toDavid the first night of _Hernani_, when he had been one ofthe long-haired band of _rapins_, who came down in theirscores to the Theatre Francais to defend their chief, Hugo, againstthe hisses of the Philistine. The two were making coffee inBarbier's attic, at the top of a side street off the Oxford Road, when these memories seized upon the old Romantic. He took up theempty coffee-pot, and brandished it from side to side as though ithad been the sword of Hernani; the miserable Academy hugging itsMoliere and Racine fled before him; the world was once moreregenerate, and Hugo its high priest. Passages from the differentparts welled to his old lips; he gave the play over again--thescene between the lover and the husband, where the husband laysdown the strange and sinister penalty to which the loversubmits--the exquisite love-scene in the fifth act--and the cry ofagonised passion with which Dona Sol defends her love against hisexecutioner. All these things he declaimed, stumping up and down, till the terrified landlady rose out of her bed to remonstrate, andgot the door locked in her face for her pains, and till the_bourgeois_ baby in the next room woke up and roared, and soput an abrupt end to the performance. Old Barbier sat downswearing, poked the fire furiously, and then, taking out a huge redhandkerchief, wiped his brow with a trembling hand. His stiff whitehair, parted on either temple, bristled like a high _loupie_over his round, black eyes, which glowed behind his spectacles. Andmeanwhile the handsome boy sat opposite, glad to laugh by way ofreaction, but at bottom stirred by the same emotion, and ready toshare in the same adorations. 

Gradually David learnt his way about this bygone world of Barbier'srecollection. A vivid picture sprang up in him of these strangeleaders of a strange band, these cadaverous poets and artists ofLouis Philippe's early days, beings in love with Lord Byron andsuicide, having Art for God, and Hugo for prophet, talking ofwere-wolves, vampires, cathedrals, sunrises, forests, passion anddespair, hatted like brigands, cloaked after Vandyke, curled likeAbsalom, making new laws unto themselves in verse as in morals, andleaving all petty talk of duty or common sense to the Academy andthe nursery. 

George Sand walking the Paris quays in male dress--George Sand atFontainebleau roaming the midnight forest with Alfred de Musset, orwintering with her dying musician among the mountains of Palma;Gerard de Nerval, wanderer, poet, and suicide; Alfred de Mussetflaming into verse at dead of night amid an answering andspendthrift blaze of wax candles; Baudelaire's blasphemies andeccentricities--these characters and incidents Barbier wove intoendless highly coloured tales, to which David listened withperpetual relish. 

'_Mon Dieu_! _Mon Dieu_! What times! What memories!' theold Frenchman would cry at last, fairly re-transported to the worldof his youth, and, springing up, he would run to the littlecupboard by his bed head, where he kept a score or so of littlepaper volumes--volumes which the tradesman David soon discovered, from a curious study of French catalogues, to have a fast-risingmoney value--and out would come Alfred de Musset's 'Nuit de Mai, 'or an outrageous verse from Baudelaire, or an harmonious nothingfrom Gautier. David gradually learnt to follow, to understand, torange all that he heard in a mental setting of his own. The Franceof his imagination indeed was a strange land! Everybody in it waseither girding at priests like Voltaire, or dying for love likeGeorge Sand's Stenio. 

But whether the picture was true to life or no, it had a verystrongly marked effect on the person conceiving it. Just as thespeculative complexion of his first youth had been decided by thechance which brought him into daily contact with the Frencheighteenth century--for no self-taught solitary boy of quick andcovetous mind can read Voltaire continuously without bearing themarks of him henceforward--so in the same way, when he passed, asFrance had done before him, from the philosophers to the Romantics, this constant preoccupation with the French literature of passionin its romantic and idealist period left deep and lasting results. 

The strongest of these results lay in the realm of moral and socialsense. What struck the lad's raw mind with more and more force ashe gathered his French books about him was the profound gulf whichseemed to divide the average French conception of the relationbetween the sexes from the average English one. In the Frenchnovels he read every young man had his mistress; every marriedwoman her lover. Tragedy frequently arose out of these relations, but that the relations must and did obtain, as a matter of course, was assumed. For the delightful heroes and heroines of a wholerange of fiction, from 'Manon Lescaut' down to Murger's 'Vie deBoheme, ' marriage did not apparently exist, even as a matter ofargument. And as to the duties of the married woman, when shepassed on to the canvas, the code was equally simple. The husbandmight kill his wife's lover--that was in the game; but the youngman's right to be was as good as his own. '_No human being cancontrol love, and no one is to blame either for feeling it or forlosing it. What alone degrades a woman is falsehood. _' So saysthe husband in George Sand's 'Jacques' when he is just about tofling himself down an Alpine precipice that his wife and Octave mayhave their way undisturbed. And all the time, what poetry andpassion in the presentation of these things! Beside them the mereremembrance of English ignorance, prudishness, and conventionalitywould set the lad swelling, as he read, with a sense of superiorscorn, and of wild sympathy for a world in which love and not law, truth and not legal fiction, were masters of human relations. 

Some little time after Reuben's visit to him he one day toldBarbier the fact of his French descent. Barbier declared that hehad always known it, had always realised something in Daviddistinct from the sluggish huckstering English temper. Why, David'smother was from the south of France; his own family came fromCarcassonne. No doubt the rich Gascon blood ran in both theirveins. _Salut au compatriole!_

Thenceforward there was a greater solidarity between the two thanever. Barbier fell into an incessant gossip of Paris--the Paris ofLouis Philippe--reviving memories and ways of speech which had beenlong dead in him, and leaving on David's mind the impression of aplace where life was from morning till night amusement, exhilaration, and seduction; where, under the bright smokeless sky, and amid the stateliest streets and public buildings in Europe, menwere always witty and women always attractive. 

Meanwhile the course of business during the spring months and therise of his trade in foreign books rapidly brought the scheme of avisit to France, which had been at first a mere dream and fancy, within the region of practical possibility, and even advantage, forthe young bookseller. Two things he was set on. If he went he wasdetermined to go under such conditions as would enable him to seeFrench life--especially French artistic and student life--from theinside. And he saw with some clearness that he would have to takehis sister with him. 

Against the latter notion Barbier protested vehemently. 

'What do you want to tie yourself to a petticoat for? If you takethe girl you will have to look after her. Paris, my boy, let meinform you, is not the best place in the world for _la jeunepersonne;_ and the Paris _rapin_ may be an amusing scoundrel, but don't trust him with young women if you can help it. LeaveMademoiselle Louie at home, and let her mind the shop. GetMademoiselle Dora or some one to stay with her, or send her toMademoiselle Dora. '

So said the Frenchman with sharp dictatorial emphasis. What apreposterous suggestion!

'I can't stop her coming, ' said David, quietly--'if she wants tocome--and she'll be sure to want. Besides, I'll not leave her aloneat home, and she'll not let me send her anywhere--you may be sureof that. '

The Frenchman stared and stormed. David fell silent. Louie was whatshe was, and it was no use discussing her. At last Barbier, beingafter all tolerably well acquainted with the lad's relations to hissister, came to a sudden end of his rhetoric, and began to thinkout something practicable. 

That evening he wrote to a nephew of his living as an artist in theQuartier Montmartre. Some months before Barbier's vanity had beenflattered by an adroit letter from this young gentleman, written, if the truth were known, at a moment when a pecuniary situation, pinched almost beyond endurance, had made it seem worth while toget his uncle's address out of his widowed mother. Barbier, abachelor, and a man of some small savings, perfectly understood whyhe had been approached, and had been none the less extraordinarilyglad to hear from the youth. He was a _rapin?_ well and good;all the great men had been _rapins_ before him. Very likely hehad the _rapin's_ characteristic vices and distractions. Allthe world knew what the life meant for nine men out of ten. Whatwas the use of preaching? Youth was youth. Clearly the oldman--himself irreproachable--would have been disappointed not tofind his nephew a sad dog on personal acquaintance. 

'Tell me, Xavier, ' his letter ran, 'how to put a young friend ofmine in the way of seeing something of Paris and Paris life, morethan your fool of a tourist generally sees. He is a bookseller, andwill, of course, mind his trade; but he is a young man of taste andintelligence besides, and moreover half French. It would be a pitythat he should visit Paris as any _sacre_ British Philistinedoes. Advise me where to place him. He would like to see somethingof your artist's life. But mind this, young man, he brings a sisterwith him as handsome as the devil, and not much easier to manage:so if you do advise--no tricks--tell me of something _convenable_. '

A few days later Barbier appeared in Potter Street just after Davidhad put up the shutters, announcing that he had a proposal to make. 

David unlocked the shop-door and let him in. Barbier looked roundwith some amazement on the small stuffy place, piled to bursting bynow with books of every kind, which only John's herculean effortscould keep in passable order. 

'Why don't you house yourself better--_hein?_' said theFrenchman. 'A business growing like this, and nothing but a den tohandle it in!'

'I shall be all right when I get my other room, ' said Davidcomposedly. 'Couldn't turn out the lodger before. The woman was onlyconfined last week. '

And as he spoke the wailing of an infant and a skurrying of feetwere heard upstairs. 

'So it seems, ' said Barbier, adjusting his spectacles inbewilderment. '_Jesus!_ What an affair! What did you permit itfor? Why didn't you turn her out in time?'

'I would have turned myself out first, ' said David. He waslounging, with his hands in his pockets, against the books; butthough his attitude was nonchalant, his tone had a vibratingenergy. 

'Barbier!'

'Yes. '

'What do women suffer for like that?'

The young man's eyes glowed, and his lips twitched a little, asthough some poignant remembrance were at his heart. 

Barbier looked at him with some curiosity. 

'Ask _le bon Dieu_ and Mother Eve, my friend. It lies betweenthem, ' said the old scoffer, with a shrug. 

David looked away in silence. On his quick mind, greedy of allhuman experience, the night of Mrs. Mason's confinement, with itssounds of anguish penetrating through all the upper rooms of thethin, ill-built house, had left an ineffaceable impression of aweand terror. In the morning, when all was safely over, he came downto the kitchen to find the husband--a man some two or three yearsolder than himself, and the smart foreman of an ironmongery shop inDeansgate--crouching over a bit of fire. The man was too muchexcited to apologise for his presence in the Grieves' room. Davidshyly asked him a question about his wife. 

'Oh, it's all right, the doctor says. There's the nurse with her, and your sister's got the baby. She'll do; but, oh, my God! it'sawful--_it's awful!_ My poor Liz! Give me a corner here, willyou! I'm all upset like. '

David had got some food out of the cupboard, made him eat it, andchatted to him till the man was more himself again. But the cryingof the new-born child overhead, together with the shaken conditionof this clever, self-reliant young fellow, so near his own age, seemed for the moment to introduce the lad to new and unknownregions of human feeling. 

While these images were pursuing each other through David's mind, Barbier was poking among his foreign books, which lay, backsupwards, on the floor to one side of the counter. 

'Do you sell them--_hein?_' he said, looking up and pointingto them with his stick. 

'Yes. Especially the scientific books. These are an order. So is that batch. Napoleon III. 's "Caesar, " isn't it? Andthose over there are "on spec. " Oh, I could do something ifI knew more! There's a man over at Oldham. One of the biggestweaving-sheds--cotton velvets--that kind of thing. He's awfullyrich, and he's got a French library; a big one, I believe. Hecame in here yesterday. I think I could make something outof him; but he wants all sorts of rum things--last-centurymemoirs, out-of-the-way ones--everything about Montaigne--firsteditions--Lord knows what! I say, Barbier, I dare say he'd buyyour books. What'll you let me have them for?'

'_Diantre!_ Not for your heart's blood, my young man. It'slike your impudence to ask. You could sell more if you knew more, you think? Well now listen to me. '

The Frenchman sat down, adjusted his spectacles, and, taking aletter from his pocket, read it with deliberation. 

It was from the nephew, Xavier Dubois, in answer to his uncle'sinquiries. Nothing, the writer declared, could have been moreopportune. He himself was just off to Belgium, where a friend hadprocured him a piece of work on a new Government building. Whyshould not his uncle's friends inhabit his rooms during hisabsence? He must keep them on, and would find it very convenient, that being so, that some one should pay the rent. There was hisstudio, which was bare, no doubt, but quite habitable, and a little_cabinet de toilette_, adjoining, and shut off, containing abed and all necessaries. Why should not the sister take thebedroom, and let the brother camp somehow in the studio? He couldno doubt borrow a bed from some friend before they came, and with alarge screen, which was one of the 'studio properties, ' a verytolerable sleeping room could be improvised, and still leave a gooddeal of the studio free. He understood that his uncle's friendswere not looking for luxury. But _le stricte necessaire_ hecould provide. 

Meanwhile the Englishman and his sister would find themselves atonce in the artists' circle, and might see as much or as little asthey liked of artistic life. He (Dubois) could of course give themintroductions. There was a sculptor, for instance, on the groundfloor, a man of phenomenal genius, _joli garcon_ besides, whowould certainly show himself _aimable_ for anybody introducedby Dubois; and on the floor above there was a landscape painter, _ancien prix de Rome_, and his wife, who would also, no doubt, make themselves agreeable, and to whom the brother and sister mightgo for all necessary information--Dubois would see to that. Sixtyfrancs a month paid the _appartement;_ a trifle for service ifyou desired it--there was, however, no compulsion--to the_concierge_ would make you comfortable; and as for your food, the Quartier Montmartre abounded in cheap restaurants, and youmight live as you pleased for one franc a day or twenty. Hesuggested that on the whole no better opening was likely to befound by two young persons of spirit, anxious to see Paris from theinside. 

'Now then, ' said Barbier, taking off his spectacles with anauthoritative click, as he shut up the letter, _'decide-toi. _Go!--and look about you for a fortnight. Improve your French; getto know some of the Paris bookmen; take some commissions out withyou--buy there to the best advantage, and come back twenty percent. Better informed than when you set out. '

He smote his hands upon his knees with energy. He had a love ofmanagement and contrivance; and the payment of Eugene's rent forhim during his absence weighed with his frugal mind. 

David stood twisting his mouth in silence a moment, his head thrownback against the books. 

'Well, I don't see why not, ' he said at last, his eyes sparkling. 

'And take notice, my friend, ' said Barbier, tapping the openletter, 'the _ancien prix de Rome_ has a wife. Where wives areyoung women can go. Xavier can prepare the way, and, if you playyour cards well, you can get Mademoiselle Louie taken off yourhands while you go about. '

David nodded. He was sitting astride on the counter, his faceshining with the excitement he was now too much of a man to showwith the old freedom. 

Suddenly there was a sound of wild voices from the inside room. 

'Miss Grieve! Miss Grieve! don't you take that child away. Bring itback, I say; I'll go to your brother, I will!'

'That's Mrs. Mason's nurse, ' said David, springing off thecounter. 'What's up now?'

He threw open the door into the kitchen, just as Louie swept intothe room from the other side. She had a white bundle in her arms, and her face was flushed with a sly triumph. After her ran thestout woman who was looking after Mrs. Mason, purple withindignation. 

'Now look yo here, Mr. Grieve, ' she cried at sight of David, 'Ican't stand it, and I won't. Am I in charge of Mrs. Mason or am Inot? Here's Miss Grieve, as soon as my back's turned, as soon asI've laid that blessed baby in its cot as quiet as a lamb--and it'sbeen howling since three o'clock this morning, as yo know--in shewhips, claws it out of its cradle, and is off wi' it, Lord knowswhere. Thank the Lord, Mrs. Mason's asleep! If she weren't, she'dhave a fit. She's feart to death o' Miss Grieve. We noather on usknow what to make on her. She's like a wild thing soomtimes--not ahuman creetur at aw--Gie me that chilt, I tell tha!'

Louie vouchsafed no answer. She sat down composedly before thefire, and, cradling the still sleeping child on her knee, she bentover it examining its waxen hands and tiny feet with an eagercuriosity. The nurse, who stood over her trembling with anger, andonly deterred from snatching the child away by the fear of wakeningit, might have been talking to the wall. 

'Now, look here, Louie, what d' you do that for?' said David, remonstrating; 'why can't you leave the child alone? You'll beputting Mrs. Mason in a taking, and that'll do her harm. '

'Nowt o' t' sort, ' said Louie composedly, ' it 's that womanthere'll wake her with screeching. She's asleep, and the baby'sasleep, and I'm taking care of it. Why can't Mrs. Bury go and lookafter Mrs. Mason? She hasn't swept her room this two days, and it'sa sight to see. '

Pricked in a tender point, Mrs. Bury broke out again into a streamof protest and invective, only modified by her fear of waking herpatient upstairs, and interrupted by appeals to David. But whenevershe came near to take the baby Louie put her hands over it, and herwide black eyes shot out intimidating flames before which theaggressor invariably fell back. 

Attracted by the fight, Barbier had come up to look, and now stoodby the shop-door, riveted by Louie's strange beauty. She wore thesame black and scarlet dress in which she had made her firstappearance in Manchester. She now never wore it out of doors, herquick eye having at once convinced her that it was not in thefashion. But the instinct which had originally led her to contriveit was abundantly justified whenever she still condescended to putit on, so startling a relief it lent to the curves of her slimfigure, developed during the last two years of growth to allwomanly roundness and softness, and to the dazzling colour of herdark head and thin face. As she sat by the fire, the white bundleon her knee, one pointed foot swinging in front of her, now hangingover the baby, and now turning her bright dangerous look andcompressed lips on Mrs. Bury, she made a peculiar witch-likeimpression on Barbier which thrilled his old nerves agreeably. Itwas clear, he thought, that the girl wanted a husband and a familyof her own. Otherwise why should she run off with other people'schildren? But he would be a bold man who ventured on her!

David, at last seeing that Louie was in the mood to tear the babeasunder rather than give it up, with difficulty induced Mrs. Buryto leave her in possession for half an hour, promising that, assoon as the mother woke, the child should be given back. 

'If I've had enough of it, ' Louie put in, as a saving clause, luckily just too late to be heard by the nurse, who had sulkilyclosed the door behind her, declaring that 'sich an owdacious chitshe never saw in her born days, and niver heerd on one oather. '

David and Barbier went back into the shop to talk, leaving Louie toher nursing. As soon as she was alone she laid back the flannelwhich lay round the child's head, and examined every inch of itsdowny poll and puckered face, her warm breath making the tiny lipstwitch in sleep as it travelled across them. Then she lifted thelittle nightgown and looked at the pink feet nestling in theirflannel wrapping. A glow sprang into her cheek; her great eyesdevoured the sleeping creature. Its weakness and helplessness, itsplasticity to anything she might choose to do with it, seemed tointoxicate her. She looked round her furtively, then bent and laida hot covetous kiss on the small clenched hand. The child moved;had it been a little older it would have wakened; but Louie, hastily covering it up, began to rock it and sing to it. 

The door into the shop was ajar. As David and Barbier were hangingtogether over a map of Paris which David had hunted out of hisstores, Barbier suddenly threw up his head with a queer look. 

'What's that she's singing?' he said quickly. 

He got up hastily, overturning his stool as he did so, and went tothe door to listen. 

'I haven't heard that, ' he said, with some agitation, 'since myfather's sister used to sing it me when I was a small lad, up atAugoumat in the mountains near Puy!'

 Sur le pont d'Avignon Tout le monde y danse en rond; Les beaux messieurs font comme ca, Les beaux messieurs font comme ca. 

The words were but just distinguishable as Louie sang. They wereclipped and mutilated as by one who no longer understood what theymeant. But the intonation was extraordinarily French, French of theSouth, and Barbier could hardly stand still under it. 

'Where did you learn that?' he called to her from the door. 

The girl stopped and looked at him with her bright bird-likeglance. But she made no reply. 

'Did your mother teach it you?' he asked, coming in. 

'I suppose so, ' she said indifferently. 

'Can you talk any French--do you remember it?'

'No. '

'But you'd soon learn. You haven't got the English mouth, that'splain. Do you know your brother thinks of taking you to Paris?'

She started. 

'He don't, ' she said laconically. 

'Oh, don't he. Just ask him then?'

Ten minutes later Louie had been put in possession of thesituation. As David had fully expected, she took no notice whateverof his suggestion that after all she might not care to come. Theymight be rough quarters, he said, and queer people about; and itwould cost a terrible deal more for two than one. Should he not askDora Lomax to take her in for a fortnight? John, of course, wouldlook after the shop. He spoke under the pressure of a sudden qualm, knowing it would be no use; but his voice had almost a note ofentreaty in it. 

'When do you want to be starting?' she asked him sharply. 'I'll notgo to Dora's--so you needn't talk o' that. You can take the moneyout of what you'll be owing me next month. '

Her nostrils dilated as the quick breath passed through them. Barbier was fascinated by the extraordinary animation of the face, and could not take his eyes off her. 

'Not for a fortnight, ' said David reluctantly, answering herquestion. 'Barbier's letter says about the tenth of May. There's twocountry sales I must go to, and some other things to settle. '

She nodded. 

'Well, then, I can get some things ready, ' she said half toherself, staring across the baby into the fire. 

When David and Barbier were gone together 'up street, ' stilltalking over their plans, Louie leapt to her feet and laid the babydown--carelessly, as though she no longer cared anything at allabout it--in the old-fashioned arm-chair wherein David spent somany midnight vigils. Then locking her hands behind her, she pacedup and down the narrow room with the springing gait, the impetuousfeverish grace, of some prisoned animal. Paris! Her education wassmall, and her ignorance enormous. But in the columns of a 'lady'spaper' she had often bought from the station bookstall at CloughEnd she had devoured nothing more eagerly than the Paris letter, with its luscious descriptions of 'Paris fashions, ' whereby evenLancashire women, even Clough End mill-hands in their Sunday best, were darkly governed from afar. All sorts of bygone dreams recurredto her--rich and subtle combinations of silks, satins, laces, furs, imaginary glories clothing an imaginary Louie Grieve. Theremembrance of them filled her with a greed past description, andshe forthwith conceived Paris as a place all shops, each of themsuperior to the best in St. Ann's Square--where one might gloatbefore the windows all day. 

She made a spring to the door, and ran upstairs to her own room. There she began to pull out her dresses and scatter them about thefloor, looking at them with a critical discontented eye. 

Time passed. She was standing absorbed before an old gown, planningout its renovation, when a howl arose from downstairs. She fledlike a roe deer, and pounced upon the baby just in time tocheckmate Mrs. Bury, who was at her heels. 

Quite regardless of the nurse's exasperation with her, first forleaving the child alone, half uncovered, in a chilly room, and nowfor again withholding it, Louie put the little creature against herneck, rocking and crooning to it. The sudden warm contact stilledthe baby; it rubbed its head into the soft hollow thus presented toit, and its hungry lips sought eagerly for their natural food. Thetouch of them sent a delicious thrill through Louie; she turned herhead round and kissed the tiny, helpless cheek with a curiousviolence; then, tired of Mrs. Bury, and anxious to get back to herplans, she almost threw the child to her. 

'There--take it! I'll soon get it again when I want to. '

And she was as good as her word. The period of convalescence was topoor Mrs. Mason--a sickly, plaintive creature at the best oftimes--one long struggle and misery. Louie represented to her asort of bird of prey, who was for ever descending on her child andcarrying it off to unknown lairs. For neither mother nor nurse hadLouie the smallest consideration; she despised and tyrannised overthem both. But her hungry fondness for the baby grew withgratification, and there was no mastering her in the matter. Warmweather came, and when she reached home after her work, she managedby one ruse or another to get hold of the child, and on oneoccasion she disappeared with it into the street for hours. Davidwas amazed by the whim, but neither he nor anyone else couldcontrol it. At last, Mrs. Mason was more or less hysterical all daylong, and hardly sane when Louie was within reach. As for thehusband, who managed to be more at home during the days of hiswife's weakness than he had yet been since David's tenancy began, he complained to David and spoke his mind to Louie once or twice, and then, suddenly, he ceased to pay any attention to his wife'swails. With preternatural quickness the wife guessed the reason. Afresh terror seized her--terror of the girl's hateful beauty. Shedragged herself from her bed, found a room, while Louie was at herwork, and carried off baby and husband, leaving no address. Luckilyfor her, the impression of Louie's black eyes proved to have been apassing intoxication, and the poor mother breathed and lived again. 

Meanwhile Louie's excitement and restlessness over the Paris planmade her more than usually trying to Dora. During this fortnightshe could never be counted on for work, not even when it was aquestion of finishing an important commission. She was too full ofher various preparations. Barbier offered her for instance, a dailyFrench lesson. She grasped in an instant the facilities which eventhe merest smattering of French would give her in Paris; everynight she sat up over her phrase book, and every afternoon she cuther work short to go to Barbier. Her whole life seemed to be oneflame of passionate expectation, though what exactly she expectedit would have been hard to say. 

Poor Dora! She had suffered many things in much patience all theseweeks. Louie's clear, hard mind, her sensuous temperament, herapparent lack of all maidenly reserve, all girlish softness, madeher incomprehensible to one for whom life was an iridescent web ofideal aims and obligations. The child of grace was dragged out ofher own austere or delicate thoughts, and made to touch, taste, andhandle what the 'world, ' as the Christian understands it, might belike. Like every other daughter of the people, Dora was familiarenough with sin and weakness--Daddy alone had made her amplyacquainted with both at one portion or another of his career. Butjust this particular temper of Louie's, with its apparent lack bothof passion and of moral sense, was totally new to her, and producedat times a stifling impression upon her, without her being able toexplain to herself with any clearness what was the matter. 

Yet, in truth, it often seemed as if the lawless creature had beenin some sort touched by Dora, as if daily contact with a being sogentle and so magnanimous had won even upon her. That confidence, for instance, which Louie had promised John, at Dora's expense, hadnever been made. When it came to the point, some touch of remorse, of shame, had sealed the girl's mocking lips. 

One little fact in particular had amazed Dora. Louie insisted, fora caprice, on going with her one night, in Easter week, to St. Damian's, and thenceforward went often. What attracted her, Dorapuzzled herself to discover. When, however, Louie had been adiligent spectator, even at early services, for some weeks, Doratimidly urged that she might be confirmed, and that Father Russellwould take her into his class. Louie laughed immoderately at theidea, but continued to go to St. Damian's all the same. Dora couldnot bear to be near her in church, but however far away she mightplace herself, she was more conscious than she liked to be ofLouie's conspicuous figure and hat thrown out against a particularpillar which the girl affected. The sharp uplifted profile with itsdisdainful expression drew her eyes against their will. She wasalso constantly aware of the impression Louie made upon the crowd, of the way in which she was stared at and remarked upon. Whenevershe passed in or out of the church, people turned, and the girl, expecting it, and totally unabashed, flashed her proud look fromside to side. 

But once in her place, she was not inattentive. The dark chancelwith its flowers and incense, the rich dresses and slow movementsof the priests, the excitement of the processional hymns--thesethings caught her and held her. Her look was fixed and eager allthe time. As to the clergy, Dora spoke to Father's Russell'ssister, and some efforts were made to get hold of the new-comer. But none of them were at all successful. The girl slipped througheverybody's hands. Only in the case of one of the curates, a manwith a powerful, ugly head, and a penetrating personality, did sheshow any wavering. Dora fancied that she put herself once or twicein his way, that something about him attracted her, and that hemight have influenced her. But as soon as the Paris project rose onthe horizon, Louie thought of nothing else. Father Impey and St. Damian's, like everything else, were forgotten. She never went nearthe church from the evening David told her his news to the day theyleft Manchester. 

David ran in to say good-bye to Daddy and Dora on the night beforethey were to start. Since the Paris journey had been in the air, Daddy's friendliness for the young fellow had revived. He was not, after all, content to sit at home upon his six hundred pounds 'likea hatching hen, ' and so far Daddy, whose interest in him had beenfor the time largely dashed by his sudden accession to fortune, wasappeased. 

When David appeared Lomax was standing on the rug, with a bookunder his arm. 

'Well, good-bye to you, young man, good-bye to you. And here's abook to take with you that you may read in the train. It will stiryou up a bit, give you an idea or two. Don't you come back toosoon. '

'Father, ' remonstrated Dora, who was standing by, 'who's to lookafter his business?'

'Be quiet, Dora! That book'll show him what can be made even of abeastly bookseller. '

David took it from him, looked at the title, and laughed. He knewit well. It was the 'Life and Errors of John Dunton, Citizen ofLondon, ' the eccentric record of a seventeenth-century dealer inbooks, who, like Daddy, had been a character and a vagrant. 

'Och! Don't I know it by heart?' said Daddy, with enthusiasm. 'Manya time it's sent me off tramping, when my poor Isabella thoughtshe'd got me tied safe by the heels in the chimney corner. _Though_ love is strong as death, and every good man loves hiswife as himself, _yet_--many's the score of times I've said itoff pat to Isabella--_yet_ I cannot think of being confined ina narrower study than the whole world. "There's a man for you! Hegets rid of one wife and saddles himself with another--sorrow a bitwill he stop at home for either of them!" Finding I am fortravelling, Valeria, to show the height of her love, is as willingI should see Europe as Eliza was I should see America. 'Och! giveme the book, you divil, ' cried Daddy, growing more and moreHibernian as his passion rose, 'and, bedad, but I'll drive it intoyou. '

And, reaching over, Daddy seized it, and turned over the pages witha trembling hand. Dora flushed, and the tears rose into her eyes. She realised perfectly that this performance was levelled at her atleast as much as at David. Daddy's mad irritability had grown oflate with every week. 

'Listen to this, Davy!' cried Daddy, putting up his hand forsilence. ' "When I have crossed the Hellespont, where poor Leanderwas drowned, Greece, China, and the Holy Land are the other threecountries I'm bound to. And perhaps when my hand is in--"'

'_My hand is in!_' repeated Daddy, in an ecstasy. 'What ajewel of a man!'

'I may step thence to the Indies, for I am a true lover of travels, and, when I am once mounted, care not whether I meet the sun at hisrising or going down, provided only I may but ramble.... _He_is truly a scholar who is versed in the volume of the Universe, whodoth not so much read of Nature as study Nature herself. '

'Well said--well said indeed!' cried Daddy, flinging the book downwith a wild gesture which startled them both. 'Was that the man, Adrian Lomax, to spend the only hours of the only life he was everlikely to see--his first thought in the morning, and his lastthought at night--in tickling the stomachs of Manchester clerks?'

His peaked chin and straggling locks fell forward on his breast. Hestared sombrely at the young people before him, in an attitudewhich, as usual, was the attitude of an actor. 

David's natural instinct was to jeer. But a glance at Doraperplexed him. There was some tragedy he did not understand underthis poor comedy. 

'Don't speak back, ' said Dora, hurriedly, under her breath, as shepassed him to get her frame. 'It only makes him worse. '

After a few minutes' broken chat, which Daddy's mood made itdifficult to keep up, David took his departure. Dora followed himdownstairs. 

'You're going to be away a fortnight, ' she said, timidly. 

As she spoke, she moved her head backwards and forwards against thewall, as though it ached, and she could not find a restful spot. 

'Oh, we shall be back by then, never fear!' said David, cheerfully. He was growing more and more sorry for her. 

'I should like to see foreign parts, ' she said wistfully. 'Is therea beautiful church, a cathedral, in Paris? Oh, there are a greatmany in France, I know! I've heard the people at St. Damian's speakof them. I would like to see the services. But they can't be nicerthan ours. '

David smiled. 

'I'm afraid I can't tell you much about them, Miss Dora; theyaren't in my line. Good-bye, and keep your heart up. '

He was going, but he turned back to say quickly--

'Why don't you let him go off for a bit of a tramp? It might quiethim. '

'I would; I would, ' she said eagerly; 'but I don't know what wouldcome of it. We're dreadfully behindhand this month, and if he wereto go away, people would be down on us; they'd think he wanted toget out of paying. '

He stayed talking a bit, trying to advise her, and, in the firstplace, trying to find out how wrong things were. But she had notyet come to the point of disclosing her father's secrets. Sheparried his questions, showing him all the while, by look andvoice, that she was grateful to him for asking--for caring. 

He went at last, and she locked the door behind him. But when thatwas done, she stood still in the dark, wringing her hands in asilent passion of longing--longing to be with him, outside, in thenight, to hear his voice, to see his handsome looks again. Oh! thefortnight would be long. So long as he was there, within a stone'sthrow, though he did not love her, and she was sad and anxious, yetManchester held her treasure, and Manchester streets had glamour, had charm. 

He walked to Piccadilly, and took a 'bus to Mortimer Street. Hemust say good-bye also to Mr. Ancrum, who had been low and ill oflate. 

'So you are off, David?' said Ancrum, rousing himself from whatseemed a melancholy brooding over books that he was in truth notreading. As David shook hands with him, the small fusty room, thepale face and crippled form awoke in the lad a sense ofindescribable dreariness. In a flash of recoil and desire histhought sprang to the journey of the next day--to the May seas--theforeign land. 

'Well, good luck to you!' said the minister, altering his positionso as to look at his visitor full, and doing it with a slownesswhich showed that all movement was an effort. ' Look after yoursister, Davy. '

David had sat down at Ancrum's invitation. He said nothing inanswer to this last remark, and Ancrum could not decipher him inthe darkness visible of the ill-trimmed lamp. 

'She's been on your mind, Davy, hasn't she?' he said, gently, laying his blanched hand on the young man's knee. 

'Well, perhaps she has, ' David admitted, with an odd note in hisvoice. 'She's not an easy one to manage. '

'No. But you've _got_ to manage her, Davy. There's only youand she together. It's your task. It's set you. And you're young, indeed, and raw, to have that beautiful self-willed creature onyour hands. '

'Beautiful? Do you think she's that?' David tried to laugh it off. 

The minister nodded. 

'You'll find it out in Paris even more than you have here. Paris isa bad place, they say. So's London, for the matter of that. Davy, before you go, I've got one thing to say to you. '

'Say away, sir. '

'You know a great deal, Davy. My wits are nothing to yours. You'llshoot ahead of all your old friends, my boy, some day. But there'sone thing you know nothing about--absolutely nothing--and you prateas if you did. Perhaps you must turn Christian before you do. Idon't know. At least, so long as you're not a Christian you won'tknow what _we_ mean by it--what the Bible means by it. It'sone little word, Davy--_sin_. '

The minister spoke with a deep intensity, as though his whole beingwere breathed into what he said. David sat silent and embarrassed, opposition rising in him to what he thought ministerial assumption. 

'Well, I don't know what you mean, ' he said, after a pause. 'Oneneedn't be very old to find out that a good many people and thingsin the world are pretty bad. Only we Secularists explain itdifferently from you. We put a good deal of it down to education, or health, or heredity. '

'Oh, I know--I know!' said the minister hastily, as thoughshrinking from the conversation he had himself evoked. 'I'm not fitto talk about it, Davy. I'm ill, I think! But there were those twothings I wanted to say to you--your sister--and--'

His voice dropped. He shaded his eyes and looked away from Davidinto the smouldering coals. 

'No--no, ' he resumed almost in a whisper; 'it's the_will_--it's the _will_. It's not anything he says, andChrist--_Christ's_ the only help. '

Again there was a silence. David studied his old teacherattentively, as far as the half-light availed him. The young manwas simply angry with a religion which could torment a soul andbody like this. Ancrum had been 'down' in this way for a long timenow. Was another of his black fits approaching? If so, religion waslargely responsible for them!

When at last David sighted his own door, he perceived a figurelounging on the steps. 

'I say, ' he said to himself with a groan, 'it's John!'

'What on earth do you want, John, at this time of night?' hedemanded. But he knew perfectly. 

'Look here!' said the other thickly, 'it's all straight. You'recoming back in a fortnight, and you'll bring her back too!'

David laughed impatiently. 

'Do you think I shall lose her in Paris or drop her in the Channel?'

'I don't know, ' said Dalby, with a curiously heavy and indistinctutterance. 'She's very bad to me. She won't ever marry me; I knowthat. But when I think I might never see her again I'm fit to goand hang myself. '

David began to kick the pebbles in the road. 

'You know what I think about it all, ' he said at last, gloomily. 'I've told you before now. She couldn't care for you if she tried. It isn't a ha'p'orth of good. I don't believe she'll ever care foranybody. Anyway, she'll marry nobody who can't give her money andfine clothes. There! You may put that in your pipe and smoke it, for it's as true as you stand there. '

John turned round restlessly, laid his hands against the wall, andhis head upon them. 

'Well, it don't matter, ' he said slowly, after a pause. 'I'll behere early. Good night!'

David stood and looked after him in mingled disgust and pity. 

'I must pack him off, ' he said, 'I must. '

Then he threw back his young shoulders and drew in the warm springair with a long breath. Away with care and trouble! Things wouldcome right--must come right. This weather was summer, and inforty-eight hours they would be in Paris!

BOOK III STORM AND STRESS

CHAPTER I

The brother and sister left Manchester about midday, and spent thenight in London at a little City hotel much frequented byNonconformist ministers, which Ancrum had recommended. 

Then next day! How little those to whom all the widestopportunities of life come for the asking, can imagine such a zest, such a freshness of pleasure! David had hesitated long before theexpense of the day service _via_ Calais; they could have goneby night third class for half the money; or they could have takenreturns by one of the cheaper and longer routes. But the eagernessto make the most of every hour of time and daylight prevailed; theywere to go by Calais and come back by Dieppe, seeing thereby asmuch as possible on the two journeys in addition to the fortnightin Paris. The mere novelty of going anything but third class wasfull of savour; Louie's self-conscious dignity as she settledherself into her corner on leaving Charing Cross caught David'seye; he saw himself reflected and laughed. 

It was a glorious day, the firstling of the summer. In the blueoverhead the great clouds rose intensely thunderously white, andjourneyed seaward under a light westerly wind. The railway banks, the copses were all primroses; every patch of water had in it thewhite and azure of the sky; the lambs were lying in the stillscanty shadow of the elms; every garden showed its tulips andwallflowers, and the air, the sunlight, the vividness of each hueand line bore with them an intoxicating joy, especially for eyesstill adjusted to the tones and lights of Manchester in winter. 

The breeze carried them merrily over a dancing sea. And once on theFrench side they spent their first hour in crossing from one sideof their carriage to the other, pointing and calling incessantly. For the first time since certain rare moments in their childhoodthey were happy together and at one. Mother Earth unrolled for thema corner of her magic show, and they took it like children at theplay, now shouting, now spell-bound. 

David had George Sand's 'Mauprat' on his knee, but he read nothingthe whole day. Never had he used his eyes so intently, sopassionately. Nothing escaped them, neither the detail of thatstrange and beautiful fen from which Amiens rises--a country ofpeat and peat-cutters where the green plain is diapered withinnumerable tiny lakes edged with black heaps of turf and daintilyset with scattered trees--nor the delicate charm of the forestlands about Chautilly. So much thinner and gracefuller these woodswere than English woods! French art and skill were here already inthe wild country. Each tree stood out as though it had beenpersonally thought for; every plantation was in regular lines; eachwoody walk drove straight from point to point, following out a planorderly and intricate as a spider's web. 

By this time Louie's fervour of curiosity and attention had verymuch abated; she grew tired and cross, and presently fell asleep. But, with every mile less between them and Paris, David's pulsebeat faster, and his mind became more absorbed in the flying scene. He hung beside the window, thrilling with enchantment and delight, drinking in the soft air, the beauty of the evening clouds, thewonderful greens and silvers and fiery browns of the poplars. Hismind was full of images--the deep lily-sprinkled lake whereinStenio, Lelia's poet lover, plunged and died; the grandioselandscape of Victor Hugo; Rene sitting on the cliff-side, andlooking farewell to the white home of his childhood;--of lines from'Childe Harold' and from Shelley. His mind was in a ferment ofyouth and poetry, and the France he saw was not the workaday Franceof peasant and high road and factory, but the creation of poeticintelligence, of ignorance and fancy. 

Paris came in a flash. He had realised to the full the squalid andever-widening zone of London, had frittered away his expectationsalmost, in the passing it; but here the great city had hardlyannounced itself before they were in the midst of it, shot out intothe noise, and glare, and crowd of the Nord station. 

They had no luggage to wait for, and David, trembling withexcitement so that he could hardly give the necessary orders, shouldered the bags, got a cab and gave the address. Outside it wasstill twilight, but the lamps were lit and the Boulevard into whichthey presently turned seemed to brother and sister a blaze oflight. The young green of the trees glittered under the gas likethe trees of a pantomime; the kiosks threw their lights out uponthe moving crowd; shops and cafes were all shining and alive; andon either hand rose the long line of stately houses, unbroken byany London or Manchester squalors and inequalities, towering as itseemed into the skies, and making for the great spectacle of lifebeneath them a setting more gay, splendid, and complete than anyEnglishman in his own borders can ever see. 

Louie had turned white with pleasure and excitement. All her dreamsof gaiety and magnificence, of which the elements had been gatheredfrom the illustrated papers and the Manchester theatres, were morethan realised by these Paris gas-lights, these vast houses, theselaughing and strolling crowds. 

'Look at those people having their coffee out of doors, ' she criedto David, 'and that white and gold place behind. Goodness! what theymust spend in gas! And just look at those two girls--look, quick--there, with the young man in the black moustache--they_are_ loud, but aren't their dresses just sweet?'

She craned her neck out of window, exclaiming--now at this, now atthat--till suddenly they passed out of the Boulevard into thecomparative darkness of side ways. Here the height of the housesproduced a somewhat different impression; Louie looked out none theless keenly, but her chatter ceased. 

At last the cab drew up with a clatter at the side of aparticularly dark and narrow street, ascending somewhat sharply tothe north-west from the point where they stopped. 

'Now for the _concierge_, ' said David, looking round him, after he had paid the man. 

And conning Barbier's directions in his mind, he turned into thegateway, and made boldly for a curtained door behind which shone alight. 

The woman, who came out in answer to his knock, looked him all overfrom head to foot, while he explained himself in his best French. 

'_Tiens_, ' she said, indifferently, to a man behind her, 'it'sthe people for No. 26--_des Anglais_--_M. Paul te l'a dit_. Hand me the key. '

The _bonhomme_ addressed--a little, stooping, wizenedcreature, with china-blue eyes, showing widely in his withered faceunder the light of the paraffin-lamp his wife was holding--reacheda key from a board on the wall and gave it to her. 

The woman again surveyed them both, the young man and the girl, andseemed to debate with herself whether she should take the troubleto be civil. Finally she said in an ungracious voice--

'It's the fourth floor to the right. I must take you up, I suppose. '

David thanked her, and she preceded them with the light through adoor opposite and up some stone stairs. 

When they had mounted two flights, she turned abruptly on thelanding--

'You take the _appartement_ from M. Dubois?'

'Yes, ' said David, enchanted to find that, thanks to old Barbier'sconstant lessons, he could both understand and reply with tolerableease; 'for a fortnight. '

'Take care; the landlord will be descending on you; M. Dubois neverpays; he may be turned out any day, and his things sold. Where isMademoiselle going to sleep?'

'But in M. Dubois' _appartement_, ' said David, hoping thistime, in his dismay, that he did _not_ understand; 'he promisedto arrange everything. '

'He has arranged nothing. Do you wish that I should provide somethings? You can hire some furniture from me. And do you wantservice?'

The woman had a grasping eye. David's frugal instincts took alarm. 

'_Merci_, Madame! My sister and I do not require much. Weshall wait upon ourselves. If Madame will tell us the name of somerestaurant near--'

Instead, Madame made an angry sound and thrust the key abruptlyinto Louie's hand, David being laden with the bags. 

'There are two more flights, ' she said roughly; 'then turn to theleft, and go up the staircase straight in front of you--first doorto the right. You've got eyes; you'll find the way. '

'_Mais, Madame_--' cried David, bewildered by thesedirections, and trying to detain her. 

But she was already half-way down the flight below them, throwing back remarks which, to judge from their tone, werenot complimentary. 

There was no help for it. Louie was dropping with fatigue, andbeginning to be much out of temper. David with difficulty assumed ahopeful air, and up they went again. Leading off the next landingbut one they found a narrow passage, and at the end of it aladder-like staircase. At the top of this they came upon a corridorat right angles, in which the first door bore the welcome figures'26. '

'All right, ' said David; 'here we are. Now we'll just go in, andlook about us. Then if you'll sit and rest a bit, I'll run down andsee where we can get something to eat. '

'Be quick, then--do, ' said Louie. 'I'm just fit to drop. '

With a beating heart he put the key into the lock of the door. Itfitted, but he could not turn it. Both he and Louie tried in vain. 

'What a nuisance!' said he at last. 'I must go and fetch up thatwoman again. You sit down and wait. '

As he spoke there was a sound below of quick steps, and of a voice, a woman's voice, humming a song. 

'Some one coming, ' he said to Louie; 'perhaps they understand thelock. '

They ran down to the landing below to reconnoitre. There was, ofcourse, gas on the staircase, and as they hung over the ironrailing they saw mounting towards them a young girl. She wore alight fawn-coloured dress and a hat covered with Parma violets. Hearing voices above her, she threw her head back, and stopped amoment. Louie's eye was caught by her hand and its tiny wrist as itlay on the balustrade, and by the coils and twists of her fairhair. David saw no details, only what seemed to him a miracle ofgrace and colour, born in an instant, out of the dark--or out ofhis own excited fancy?

She came slowly up the steps, looking at them, at the tall darkyouth and the girl beside him. Then on the top step she paused, instead of going past them. David took off his hat, but all thepractical questions he had meant to ask deserted him. His Frenchseemed to have flown. 

'You are strangers, aren't you?' she said, in a clear, high, somewhat imperious voice. 'What number do you want?'

Her expression had a certain _hauteur_, as of one defendingher native ground against intruders. Under the stimulus of it Davidfound his tongue. 

'We have taken M. Paul Dubois' rooms, ' he said. 'We have found hisdoor, but the key the _concierge_ gave us does not fit it. '

She laughed, a free, frank laugh, which had a certain wild note init. 

'These doors have to be coaxed, ' she said; 'they don't likeforeigners. Give it me. This is my way, too. '

Stepping past them, she preceded them up the narrow stairs, and wasjust about to try the key in the lock, when a sudden recollectionseemed to flash upon her. 

'I know!' she said, turning upon them. '_Tenez--que je suis bete!_ You are Dubois' English friends. He told me something, and Ihad forgotten all about it. You are going to take his rooms?'

'For a week or two, ' said David, irritated a little by the laughingmalice, the sarcastic wonder of her eyes, 'while he is doing somework in Brussels. It seemed a convenient arrangement, but if we arenot comfortable we shall go elsewhere. If you can open the door forus we shall be greatly obliged to you, Mademoiselle. But if not Imust go down for the _concierge_. We have been travelling allday, and my sister is tired. '

'Where did you learn such good French?' she said carelessly, at thesame time leaning her weight against the door, and manipulating thekey in such a way that the lock turned, and the door flew open. 

Behind it appeared a large dark space. The light from the gas-jetin the passage struck into it, but beyond a chair and a tallscreen-like object in the middle of the floor, it seemed to Davidto be empty. 

'That's his _atelier_, of course, ' said the unknown; 'and mineis next to it, at the other end. I suppose he has a cupboard tosleep in somewhere. Most of us have. But I don't know anythingabout Dubois. I don't like him. He is not one of my friends. '

She spoke in a dry, masculine voice, which contrasted in thesharpest way with her youth, her dress, her dainty smallness. Then, all of a sudden, as her eyes travelled over the English pairstanding bewildered on the threshold of Dubois' most uninvitingapartment, she began to laugh again. Evidently the situation seemedto her extremely odd. 

'Did you ask the people downstairs to get anything ready for you?'she inquired. 

'No, ' said David, hesitating; 'we thought we could manage forourselves. '

'Well--perhaps--after the first, ' she said, still laughing. 'But--Imay as well warn you--the Merichat will be very uncivil to you ifyou don't manage to pay her for something. Hadn't you betterexplore? That thing in the middle is Dubois' easel, of course. '

David groped his way in, took some matches from his pocket, found agas-bracket with some difficulty, and lit up. Then he and Louielooked round them. They saw a gaunt high room, lit on one side by ahuge studio-window, over which various tattered blinds were drawn;a floor of bare boards, with a few rags of carpet here and there;in the middle, a table covered with painter's apparatus ofdifferent kinds; palettes, paints, rags, tin-pots, and, thrown downamongst them, some stale crusts of bread; a large easel, with anumber of old and dirty canvases piled upon it; two chairs, one ofthem without the usual complement of legs; a few etchings andoil-sketches and fragments of coloured stuffs pinned against thewall in wild confusion; and, spread out casually behind the easel, an iron folding-bedstead, without either mattress or bed-clothes. In the middle of the floor stood a smeared kettle on a spirit-stove, and a few odds and ends of glass and china were on the mantelpiece, together with a paraffin-lamp. Every article in the room was thickin dust. 

When she had, more or less, ascertained these attractive details, Louie stood still in the middle of M. Dubois' apartment. 

'What did he tell all those lies for?' she said to David fiercely. For in the very last communication received from him, Dubois haddescribed himself as having made all necessary preparations '_etpour la toilette et pour le manger. _' He had also asked for therent in advance, which David with some demur had paid. 

'Here's something, ' cried David; and, turning a handle in the wall, he pulled a flimsy door open and disclosed what seemed a cupboard. The cupboard, however, contained a bed, some bedding, blankets, andwashing arrangements; and David joyously announced his discoveries. Louie took no notice of him. She was tired, angry, disgusted. Theillusion of Paris was, for the moment, all gone. She sat herselfdown on one of the two chairs, and, taking off her hat, she threwit from her on to the belittered table with a passionate gesture. 

The French girl had so far stood just outside, leaning against thedoorway, and looking on with unabashed amusement while they madetheir inspection. Now, however, as Louie uncovered, the spectatorat the door made a little, quick sound, and then ran forward. 

'_Mais, mon Dieu!_ how handsome you are!' she said with awhimsical eagerness, stopping short in front of Louie, and drivingher little hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. 'What a head!--what eyes! Why didn't I see before? You must sit to me--you_must!_ You will, won't you? I will pay you anything you like!You sha'n't be dull--somebody shall come and amuse you. _Voyons--monsieur!_' she called imperiously. 

David came up. She stood with one hand on the table leaning herlight weight backward, looking at them with all her eyes--the veryembodiment of masterful caprice. 

'Both of them!' she said under her breath, '_superbe!_'Monsieur, look here. You and mademoiselle are tired. There isnothing in these rooms. Dubois is a scamp without a sou. He does nowork, and he gambles on the Bourse. Everything he had he has soldby degrees. If he has gone to Brussels now to work honestly, it isfor the first time in his life. He lives on the hope of gettingmoney out of an uncle in England--that I know, for he boasts of itto everybody. It is just like him to play a practical joke onstrangers. No doubt you have paid him already--_n'est-ce pas_?I thought as much. Well, never mind! My rooms are next door. I amElise Delaunay. I work in Taranne's _atelier_. I am an artist, pure and simple, and I live to please myself and nobody else. But Ihave a chair or two, and the woman downstairs looks after mebecause I make it worth her while. Come with me. I will give yousome supper, and I will lend you a rug and a pillow for that bed. Then to-morrow you can decide what to do. '

David protested, stammering and smiling. But he had flushed a rosyred, and there was no real resistance in him. He explained theinvitation to Louie, who had been looking helplessly from one tothe other, and she at once accepted it. She understood perfectlythat the French girl admired her; her face relaxed its frown; shenodded to the stranger with a sort of proud yielding, and then letherself be taken by the arm and led once more along the corridor. 

Elise Delaunay unlocked her own door. 

'_Bien!_' she said, putting her head in first, 'Merichat hasearned her money. Now go in--go in!--and see if I don't give yousome supper. '

CHAPTER II

She pushed them in, and shut the door behind them. They lookedround them in amazement. Here was an _atelier_ preciselycorresponding in size and outlook to Dubois'. But to theirtired eyes the change was one from squalor to fairyland. Theroom was not in fact luxurious at all. But there was a Persianrug or two on the polished floor; there was a wood fire burningon the hearth, and close to it there was a low sofa or divancovered with pieces of old stuffs, and flanked by a table whereonstood a little meal, a roll, some cut ham, part of a flat fruittart from the _patissier_ next door, a coffee pot, and a spiritkettle ready for lighting. There were two easels in the room;one was laden with sketches and photographs; the other carrieda half-finished picture of a mosque interior in Oran--a richsplash of colour, making a centre for all the rest. Everywhereindeed, on the walls, on the floor, or standing on the chairs, were studies of Algeria, done with an ostentatiously bold andrapid hand. On the mantelpiece was a small reproduction in terracotta of one of Dalou's early statues, a peasant woman in a longcloak straining her homely baby to her breast--true and passionate. Books lay about, and in a corner was a piano, open, with aconfusion of tattered music upon it. And everywhere, as it seemedto Louie, were _shoes!_--the daintiest and most fantastic shoesimaginable--Turkish shoes, Pompadour shoes, old shoes and newshoes, shoes with heels and shoes without, shoes lined with fur, and shoes blown together, as one might think, out of cardboardand ribbons. The English girl's eyes fastened upon them at once. 

'Ah, you tink my shoes pretty, ' said the hostess, speaking a fewwords of English, _'c'est mon dada, voyez-vous--ma collection!--Tenez_--I cannot say dat in English, Monsieur; explain to yoursister. My shoes are my passion, next to my foot. I am not pretty, but my foot is ravishing. Dalou modelled it for his Siren. Thatturned my head. Sit down, Mademoiselle--we will find some plates. '

She pushed Louie into a corner of the divan, and then she went overto a cupboard standing against the wall, and beckoned to David. 

'Take the plates--and this potted meat. Now for the _petitvin_ my doctor cousin brought me last week from the familyestate. I have stowed it away somewhere. Ah! here it is. We arefrom the Gironde--at least my mother was. My father wasnobody--_bourgeois_ from tip to toe, though he called himselfan artist. It was a _mesalliance_ for her when she marriedhim. Oh, he led her a life!--she died when I was small, and lastyear _he_ died, eleven months ago. I did my best to cry. _Impossible!_ He had made Maman and me cry too much. And now Iam perfectly alone in the world, and perfectly well-behaved. Monsieur Prudhomme may talk--I snap my finger at him. You will haveyour ideas, of course. No matter! If you eat my salt, you willhardly be able to speak ill of me. '

'Mademoiselle!' cried David, inwardly cursing his shyness--ashyness new to him--and his complete apparent lack of anything tosay, or the means of saying it. 

'Oh, don't protest!--after that journey you can't afford to wasteyour breath. Move a little, Monsieur--let me open the other door ofthe cupboard--there are some chocolates worth eating on that backshelf. Do you admire my _armoire?_ It is old Breton--itbelonged to my grandmother, who was from Morbihan. She brought herlinen in it. It is cherry wood, you see, mounted in silver. You maysearch Paris for another like it. Look at that flower work on thepanels. It is not _banal_ at all--it has character--there isreal design in it. Now take the chocolates, and these sardine--putthem down over there. As for me, I make the coffee. '

She ran over to the spirit lamp, and set it going; she measured outthe coffee; then sitting down on the floor, she took the bellowsand blew up the logs. 

'Tell me your name, Monsieur?' she said suddenly, looking round. 

David gave it in full, his own name and Louie's. Then he walked upto her, making an effort to be at his ease, and said somethingabout their French descent. His mode of speaking was slow andbookish--correct, but wanting in life. After this year's devotionto French books, after all his compositions with Barbier, he hadsupposed himself so familiar with French! With the woman from the_loge_, indeed, he could have talked at large, had she beenconversational instead of rude. But here, with this little glancingcreature, he felt himself plunged in a perfect quagmire ofignorance and stupidity. When he spoke of being half French, shebecame suddenly grave, and studied him with an intent piercinglook. 'No, ' she said slowly, 'no, at bottom you are not French a bit, you are all English, I feel it. I should fight you--_a outrance!Grive_--what a strange name! It's a bird's name. You are notlike it--you do not belong to it. But _David_!--ah, that isbetter. _Voyons_!'

She sprang up, ran over to the furthest easel, and, routing aboutamongst its disorder of prints and photographs, she hit upon one, which she held up triumphantly. 

'There, Monsieur!--there is your prototype. That is David--theyoung David--scourge of the Philistine. You are bigger and broader. I would rather fight him than you--but it is like you, all thesame. Take it. '

And she held out to him a photograph of the Donatello David atFlorence--the divine young hero in his shepherd's hat, fresh fromthe slaying of the oppressor. 

He looked at it, red and wondering, then shook his head. 

'What is it? Who made it, Mademoiselle?'

'Donatello--oh, I never saw it. I was never in Italy, but a friendgave it me. It is like you, I tell you. But, what use is that? Youare English--yes, you _are_, in spite of your mother. It isvery well to be called David--you may be Goliath all the time!'

Her tone had grown hard and dry--insulting almost. Her look senthim a challenge. 

He stared at her dumbfounded. All the self-confidence with which hehad hitherto governed his own world had deserted him. He was like atongue-tied child in her hands. 

She enjoyed her mastery, and his discomfiture. Her look changed andmelted in an instant. 

'I am rude, ' she said, 'and you can't answer me back--not yet--for aday or two. _Pardon_! Monsieur David--Mademoiselle--will youcome to supper?'

She put chairs and waved them to their places with the joyousanimation of a child, waiting on them, fetching this and that, withthe quickest, most graceful motions. She had brought from the_armoire_ some fine white napkins, and now she produced aglass or two and made her guests provide themselves with the redwine which neither had ever tasted before, and over which Louiemade an involuntary face. Then she began to chatter and toeat--both as fast as possible--now laughing at her own English orat David's French, and now laying down her knife and fork that shemight look at Louie with an intent professional look whichcontrasted oddly with the wild freedom of her talk and movements. 

Suddenly she took up a wineglass and held it out to David with apiteous childish gesture. 

'Fill it, Monsieur, and then drink--drink to my good luck. I wishfor something--with my _life_--my soul; but there are peoplewho hate me, who would delight to see me crushed. And it will bethree weeks--three long long weeks, almost--before I know. '

She was very pale, the tears had sprung to her eyes, and the handholding the glass trembled. David flushed and frowned in the vaindesire to understand her. 

'What am I to do?' he said, taking the glass mechanically, butmaking no use of it. 

'Drink!--drink to my success. I have two pictures, Monsieur, in theSalon; you know what that means? the same as your _Academie?Parfaitement!_ ah! you understand. One is well hung, on theline; the other has been shamefully treated--but _shamefully!_And all the world knows why. I have some enemies on the jury, andthey delight in a mean triumph over me--a triumph which is ascandal. But I have friends, too--good friends--and in three weeksthe rewards will be voted. You understand? the medals, and the_mentions honorables_. As for a medal--no! I am only two yearsin the _atelier;_ I am not unreasonable. But a _mention!_--ah! Monsieur David, if they don't give it me I shall be verymiserable. '

Her voice had gone through a whole gamut of emotion in thisspeech--pride, elation, hope, anger, offended dignity--sinkingfinally to the plaintive note of a child asking for consolation. 

And luckily David had followed her. His French novels had broughthim across the Salon and the jury system; and Barbier had told himtales. His courage rose. He poured the wine into the glass with aquick, uncertain hand, and raised it to his lips. 

'_A la gloire de Mademoiselle!_' he cried, tossing it downwith a gesture almost as free and vivid as her own. 

Her eye followed him with excitement, taking in every detail of theaction--the masculine breadth of chest, the beauty of the dark headand short upper lip. 

'Very good--very good!' she said, clapping her small hands. 'You didthat admirably--you improve--_n'est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?_'

But Louie only stared blankly and somewhat haughtily in return. Shewas beginning to be tired of her silent _role_, and of thesort of subordination it implied. The French girl seemed to divineit, and her. 

'She does not like me, ' she said, with a kind of wonder under herbreath, so that David did not catch the words. 'The other is quitedifferent. '

Then, springing up, she searched in the pockets of her jacket forsomething--lips pursed, brows knitted, as though the quest wereimportant. 

'Where are my cigarettes?' she demanded sharply. 'Ah! here they are. Mademoiselle--Monsieur. '

Louie laughed rudely, pushing them back without a word. Then shegot up, and began boldly to look about her. The shoes attractedher, and some Algerian scarves and burnouses that were lying on adistant chair. She went to turn them over. 

Mademoiselle Delaunay looked after her for a moment--with the samecritical attention as before--then with a shrug she threw herselfinto a corner of the divan, drawing about her a bit of oldembroidered stuff which lay there. It was so flung, however, as toleave one dainty foot in an embroidered silk stocking visiblebeyond it. The tone of the stocking was repeated in the bunch ofviolets at her neck, and the purples of the flowers told withcharming effect against her white skin and the pale fawn colour ofher dress and hair. David watched her with intoxication. She couldhardly be taller than most children of fourteen, but herproportions were so small and delicate that her height, whatever itwas, seemed to him the perfect height for a woman. She handled hercigarette with mannish airs; unless it were some old harridan in acollier's cottage, he had never seen a woman smoke before, andcertainly he had never guessed it could become her so well. Notpretty! He was in no mood to dissect the pale irregular face withits subtleties of line and expression; but, as she sat theresmoking and chatting, she was to him the realisation--the climax ofhis dream of Paris. All the lightness and grace of that dream, thestrangeness, the thrill of it seemed to have passed into her. 

'Will you stay in those rooms?' she inquired, slowly blowing awaythe curls of smoke in front of her. 

David replied that he could not yet decide. He looked as hefelt--in a difficulty. 

'Oh! _you_ will do well enough there. But yoursister--_Tenez_! There is a family on the floor below--anartist and his wife. I have known them take _pensionnaires_. They are not the most distinguished persons in the world--_maisenfin_!--it is not for long. Your sister might do worse thanboard with them. '

David thanked her eagerly. He would make all inquiries. He had inhis pocket a note of introduction from Dubois to Madame Cervin, andanother, he believed, to the gentleman on the ground floor--to M. Montjoie, the sculptor. 

'Ah! M. Montjoie!'

Her brows went up, her grey eyes flashed. As for her tone it washalf amused, half contemptuous. She began to speak, movedrestlessly, then apparently thought better of it. 

'After all, ' she said, in a rapid undertone, '_qu'est-ce que celame fait? Allons. _ Why did you come here at all, instead of to anhotel, for so short a time?'

He explained as well as he was able. 

'You wanted to see something of French life, and French artists orwriters?' she repeated slowly, 'and you come with introductions fromXavier Dubois! _C'est drole, ca. _ Have you studied art?'

He laughed. 

'No--except in books. '

'What books?'

'Novels--George Sand's. '

It was her turn to laugh now. 

'You are really too amusing! No, Monsieur, no; you interest me. I have the best will in the world towards you; but I cannot askConsuelos and Teverinos to meet you. _Pas possible. _ I regret--'

She fell into silence a moment, studying him with a merry look. Then she broke out again. 

'Are you a connoisseur in pictures, Monsieur?'

He had reddened already under her _persiflage. _ At this hegrew redder still. 

'I have never seen any, Mademoiselle, ' he said, almost piteously;'except once a little exhibition in Manchester. '

'Nor sculpture?'

'No, ' he said honestly; 'nor sculpture. '

It seemed to him he was being held under a microscope, so keen andpitiless were her laughing eyes. But she left him no time to resentit. 

'So you are a blank page, Monsieur--virgin soil--and you confessit. You interest me extremely. I should even like to teach you alittle. I am the most ignorant person in the world. I know nothingabout artists in books. _Mais je suis artiste, moi! filled'artiste. _ I could tell you tales--'

She threw her graceful head back against the cushion behind her, and smiled again broadly, as though her sense of humour wereirresistibly tickled by the situation. 

Then a whim seized her, and she sat up, grave and eager. 

'I have drawn since I was eight years old, ' she said; 'would youlike to hear about it? It is not romantic--not the least in theworld--but it is true. '

And with what seemed to his foreign ear a marvellous swiftness andfertility of phrase, she poured out her story. After her motherdied she had been sent at eight years old to board at a farm nearRouen by her father, who seemed to have regarded his daughter nowas plaything and model, now as an intolerable drag on the freedomof a vicious career. And at the farm the child's gift declareditself. She began with copying the illustrations, the saints andholy families in a breviary belonging to one of the farm servants;she went on to draw the lambs, the carts, the horses, the farmbuildings, on any piece of white wood she could find littered aboutthe yard, or any bit of paper saved from a parcel, till at last theold cure took pity upon her and gave her some chalks and adrawing-book. At fourteen her father, for a caprice, reclaimed her, and she found herself alone with him in Paris. To judge from thehints she threw out, her life during thee next few years had beenof the roughest and wildest, protected only by her indomitableresolve to learn, to make herself an artist, come what would. 'Imeant to be _famous_, and I mean it still!' she said, with apassionate emphasis which made David open his eyes. Her fatherrefused to believe in her gift, and was far too self-indulgent andbrutal to teach her. But some of his artist friends were kind toher, and taught her intermittently; by the help of some of them shegot permission, although under age, to copy in the Louvre, and withhardly any technical knowledge worked there feverishly from morningto night; and at last Taranne--the great Taranne, from whose_atelier_ so many considerable artists had gone out to theconquest of the public--Taranne had seen some of her drawings, heard her story, and generously taken her as a pupil. 

Then emulation took hold of her--the fierce desire to be first inall the competitions of the _atelier_. David had the greatestdifficulty in following her rapid speech, with its slang, itstechnical idioms, its extravagance and variety; but he made outthat she had been for a long time deficient in sound training, andthat her rivals at the _atelier_ had again and again beatenher easily in spite of her gift, because of her weakness in thegrammar of her art. 

'And whenever they beat me I could have killed my conquerors; andwhenever I beat them, I despised my judges and wanted to give theprize away. It is not my fault. _Je suis faite comme ca--voila!_ I am as vain as a peacock; yet when people admire anything Ido, I think them fools--_fools!_ I am jealous and proud andabsurd--so they all say; yet a word, a look from a realartist--from one of the great men who _know_--can break me, make me cry. _Demelez ca, Monsieur, si vous pouvez!_'

She stopped, out of breath. Their eyes were on each other. Thefascination, the absorption expressed in the Englishman's lookstartled her. She hurriedly turned away, took up her cigaretteagain, and nestled into the cushion. He vainly tried to clothe someof the quick comments running through his mind in adequate French, could find nothing but the most commonplace phrases, stammered outa few, and then blushed afresh. In her pity for him she took up herstory again. 

After her father's sudden death, the shelter, such as it was, ofhis name and companionship was withdrawn. What was she to do? Itturned out that she possessed a small _rente_ which had belonged toher mother, and which her father had never been able to squander. Two relations from her mother's country near Bordeaux turned up toclaim her, a country doctor and his sister--middle-aged, devout--toher wild eyes at least, altogether forbidding. 

'They made too much of their self-sacrifice in taking me to livewith them, ' she said with her little ringing laugh. 'I said tothem--"My good uncle and aunt, it is too much--no one could havethe right to lay such a burden upon you. Go home and forget me. Iam incorrigible. I am an artist. I mean to live by myself, and workfor myself. I am sure to go to the bad--good morning. " They wenthome and told the rest of my mother's people that I was insane. Butthey could not keep my money from me. It is just enough for me. Besides, I shall be selling soon, --certainly I shall be selling! Ihave had two or three inquiries already about one of the exhibitsin the Salon. Now then--_talk_, Monsieur David!' and sheemphasised the words by a little frown; 'it is your turn. '

And gradually by skill and patience she made him talk, made himgive her back some of her confidences. It seemed to amuse hergreatly that he should be a bookseller. She knew no booksellers inParis; she could assure him they were all pure _bourgeois_, and there was not one of them that could be likened to Donatello'sDavid. Manchester she had scarcely heard of; she shook her fairhead over it. But when he told her of his French reading, when hewaxed eloquent about Rousseau and George Sand, then her mirthbecame uncontrollable. 

'You came to France to talk of Rousseau and George Sand?' she askedhim with dancing eyes--'_Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_ what do youtake us for?'

This time his vanity was hurt. He asked her to tell him what shemeant--why she laughed at him. 

'I will do better than that, ' she said; 'I will get some friend ofmine to take you to-morrow to "Les Trois Rats. "'

'What is "Les Trois Rats"?' he asked, half wounded and halfmystified. 

'"Les Trois Rats, " Monsieur, is an artist's cafe. It is famous, itis characteristic; if you are in search of local colour you mustcertainly go there. When you come back you will have some freshideas, I promise you. '

He asked if ladies also went there. 

'Some do; I don't. Conventions mean nothing to me, as you perceive, or I should have a companion here to play propriety. But like you, perhaps, I am Romantic. I believe in the grand style. I have ideasas to how men should treat me. I can read Octave Feuillet. I have aterrible weakness for those _cavaliers_ of his. And garbagemakes me ill. So I avoid the "Trois Rats. "'

She fell silent, resting her little chin on her hand. Then with asudden sly smile she bent forward and looked him in the eyes. 

'Are you pious, Monsieur, like all the English? There is somereligion left in your country, isn't there?'

'Yes, certainly, ' he admitted, 'there was a good deal. '

Then, hesitating, he described his own early reading of Voltaire, watching its effect upon her, afraid lest here too he should saysomething fatuous, behind the time, as he seemed to have been doingall through. 

'Voltaire!'--she shrugged her little shoulders--'Voltaire to me isjust an old _perruque_--a prating philanthropical person who talkedabout _le bon Dieu_, and wrote just what every _bourgeois_ canunderstand. If he had had his will and swept away the clergy andthe Church, how many fine subjects we artists should have lost!'

He sat helplessly staring at her. She enjoyed his perplexity aminute; then she returned to the charge. 

'Well, my credo is very short. Its first article is art--and itssecond is art--and its third is art!'

Her words excited her. The delicate colour flushed into her cheek. She flung her head back and looked straight before her withhalf-shut eyes. 

'Yes--I believe in art--and expression--and colour--and _levrai_. Velazquez is my God, and--and he has too many prophets tomention! I was devout once for three months--since then I havenever had as much faith of the Church sort as would lie on aten-sous piece. But'--with a sudden whimsical change of voice--'Iam as credulous as a Breton fisherman, and as superstitious as agipsy! Wait and see. Will you look at my pictures?'

She sprang up and showed her sketches. She had been a winter inAlgiers, and had there and in Spain taken a passion for the East, for its colour, its mystery, its suggestions of cruelty andpassion. She chattered away, explaining, laughing, haranguing, andDavid followed her submissively from thing to thing, dumb with theinterest and curiosity of this new world and language of theartist. 

Louie meanwhile, who, after the refreshment of supper, had beenforgetting both her fatigue and the other two in the entertainmentprovided her by the shoes and the Oriental dresses, had now found alittle inlaid coffer on a distant table, full of Algerian trinkets, and was examining them. Suddenly a loud crash was heard from herneighbourhood. 

Elise Delaunay stood still. Her quick speech, died on her lips. Shemade one bound forward to Louie; then, with a cry, she turneddeathly pale, tottered, and would have fallen, but that David ranto her. 

'The glass is broken, ' she said, or rather gasped; 'she has brokenit--that old Venetian glass of Maman's. Oh! my pictures!--mypictures! How can I undo it? _Je suis perdue_! Oh go!--go!--_go_--both of you! Leave me alone! Why did I ever see you?'

She was beside herself with rage and terror. She laid hold ofLouie, who stood in sullen awkwardness and dismay, and pushed herto the door so suddenly and so violently that the stronger, tallergirl yielded without an attempt at resistance. Then holding thedoor open, she beckoned imperiously to David, while the tearsstreamed down her cheeks. 

'Adieu, Monsieur--say nothing--there is nothing to be said--go!'

He went out bewildered, and the two in their amazement walkedmechanically to their own door. 

'She is mad!' said Louie, her eyes blazing, when they paused andlooked at each other. 'She must be mad. What did she say?'

'What happened?' was all he could reply. 

'I threw down that old glass--it wasn't my fault--I didn't see it. It was standing on the floor against a chair. I moved the chairback just a trifle, and it fell. A shabby old thing--I could havepaid for another easily. Well, I'm not going there again to betreated like that. '

The girl was furious. All that chafed sense of exclusion andslighted importance which had grown upon her during David's_tete-a-tete_ with their strange hostess came to violentexpression in her resentment. She opened the door of their room, saying that whatever he might do she was going to bed and to sleepsomewhere, if it was on the floor. 

David made a melancholy light in the squalid room, and Louie wentabout her preparations in angry silence. When she had withdrawninto the little cupboard-room, saying carelessly that she supposedhe could manage with one of the bags and his great coat, he satdown on the edge of the bare iron bedstead, and recognised with astart that he was quivering all over--with fatigue, or excitement?His chief feeling perhaps was one of utter discomfiture, flatness, and humiliation. 

He had sat there in the dark without moving for some minutes, whenhis ear caught a low uncertain tapping at the door. His heartleapt. He sprang up and turned the key in an instant. 

There on the landing stood Elise Delaunay, her arms filled withwhat looked like a black bearskin rug, her small tremulous face andtear-wet eyes raised to his. 

'_Pardon_, Monsieur, ' she said hurriedly. 'I told you I wassuperstitious--well, now you see. Will you take this rug?--one cansleep anywhere with it though it is so old. And has your sisterwhat she wants? Can I do anything for her? No! _Alors_--I musttalk to you about her in the morning. I have some more things in myhead to say. _Pardon!--et bonsoir. '_

She pushed the rug into his hands. He was so moved that he let itdrop on the floor unheeding, and as she looked at him, halfaudacious, half afraid, she saw a painful struggle, as of somestrange new birth, pass across his dark young face. They stood so amoment, looking at each other. Then he made a quick step forwardwith some inarticulate words. In an instant she was halfway alongthe corridor, and, turning back so that her fair hair and smilingeyes caught the light she held, she said to him with the queenliestgesture of dismissal:

'_Au revoir_, Monsieur David, sleep well. '

CHAPTER III

David woke early from a restless sleep. He sprang up and dressed. Never had the May sun shone so brightly; never had life looked morealluring. 

In the first place he took care to profit by the hints of the nightbefore. He ran down to make friends with Madame Merichat--a processwhich was accomplished without much difficulty, as soon as a francor two had passed, and arrangements had been made for the passingof a few more. She was to take charge of the _appartement_, and provide them with their morning coffee and bread. And upon thisher grim countenance cleared. She condescended to spend a quarterof an hour gossiping with the Englishman, and she promised to standas a buffer between him and Dubois' irate landlord. 

'A job of work at Brussels, you say, Monsieur? _Bien_; I willtell the _proprietaire_. He won't believe it--Monsieur Duboistells too many lies; but perhaps it will keep him quiet. He willthink of the return--of the money in the pocket. He will bid meinform him the very moment Monsieur Dubois shows his nose, that hemay descend upon him, and so you will be let alone. '

He mounted the stairs again, and stood a moment looking along thepassage with a quickening pulse. There was a sound of low singing, as of one crooning over some occupation. It must be she! Then shehad recovered her trouble of the night before--her strange trouble. Yet he dimly remembered that in the farm-houses of the Peak alsothe breaking of a looking-glass had been held to be unlucky. And, of course, in interpreting the omen she had thought of her picturesand the jury. 

How could he see her again? Suddenly it occurred to him that shehad spoken of taking a holiday since the Salon opened. A holidaywhich for her meant 'copying in the Louvre. ' And where else, pray, does the tourist naturally go on the first morning of a visit toParis?

The young fellow went back into his room with a radiant face, andspent some minutes, as Louie had not yet appeared, in elaboratinghis toilette. The small cracked glass above the mantelpiece was notflattering, and David was almost for the first time anxious aboutand attentive to what he saw there. Yet, on the whole, he waspleased with his short serge coat and his new tie. He thought theygave him something of a student air, and would not disgrace even_her_ should she deign to be seen in his company. As he laidhis brush down he looked at his own brown hand, and remembered herswith a kind of wonder--so small and white, the wrist so delicatelyrounded. 

When Louie emerged she was not in a good temper. She declared thatshe had hardly slept a wink; that the bed was not fit to sleep on;that the cupboard was alive with mice, and smelt intolerably. Davidfirst endeavoured to appease her with the coffee and rolls whichhad just arrived, and then he broached the plan of sending her toboard with the Cervins, which Mademoiselle Delaunay had suggested. What did she think? It would cost more, perhaps, but he couldafford it. On their way out he would deliver the two notes ofintroduction, and no doubt they could settle it directly if sheliked. 

Louie yawned, put up objections, and refused to see anything in apromising light. Paris was horrid, and the man who had let them therooms ought to be 'had up. ' As for people who couldn't talk anyEnglish she hated the sight of them. 

The remark from an Englishwoman in France had its humour. But Daviddid not see that point of it. He flushed hotly, and with difficultyheld an angry tongue. However, he was possessed with an inwarddread--the dread of the idealist who sees his pleasure as abeautiful whole--lest they should so quarrel as to spoil the visitand the new experience. Under this curb he controlled himself, andpresently, with more _savoir vivre_ than he was conscious of, proposed that they should go out and see the shops. 

Louie, at the mere mention of shops, passed into another mood. After she had spent some time on dressing they sallied forth, Daviddelivering his notes on the way down. Both noticed that the housewas squalid and ill-kept, but apparently full of inhabitants. Davidsurmised that they were for the most part struggling persons ofsmall means and extremely various occupations. There were three_ateliers_ in the building, the two on their own top floor, and M. Montjoie's, which was apparently built out at the back onthe ground floor. The first floor was occupied by a dressmaker, the_proprietaires_ best tenant, according to Madame Merichat. Above her was a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, with hiswife and two or three children; above them again the Cervins, and acouple of commercial travellers, and so on. 

The street outside, in its general aspect, suggested the samesmall, hard-pressed professional life. It was narrow and dull; itmounted abruptly towards the hill of Montmartre, with its fort andcemetery, and, but for the height of the houses, which is in itselfa dignified architectural feature, would have been no moreinspiriting than a street in London. 

A few steps, however, brought them on to the Boulevard Montmartre, and then, taking the Rue Lafitte, they emerged upon the Boulevarddes Italiens. 

Louie looked round her, to this side and that, paused for a moment, bewildered as it were by the general movement and gaiety of thescene. Then a _lingerie_ shop caught her eye, and she made forit. Soon the last cloud had cleared from the girl's brow. She gaveherself with ecstasy to the shops, to the people. What jewellery, what dresses, what delicate cobwebs of lace and ribbon, whatmiracles of colour in the florists' windows, what suggestions ofwealth and lavishness everywhere! Here in this world of costlycontrivance, of an eager and inventive luxury, Louise Suveret'sdaughter felt herself at last at home. She had never set foot in itbefore; yet already it was familiar, and she was part of it. 

Yes, she was as well dressed as anybody, she concluded, exceptperhaps the ladies in the closed carriages whose dress could onlybe guessed at. As for good looks, there did not seem to be much of_them_ in Paris. She called the Frenchwomen downright plain. They knew how to put on their clothes; there was style about them, she did not deny that; but she was prepared to maintain that therewas hardly a decent face among them. 

Such air, and such a sky! The trees were rushing into leaf; summerdresses were to be seen everywhere; the shops had swung out theirawnings, and the day promised a summer heat still tempered by afresh spring breeze. For a time David was content to lounge along, stopping when his companion did, lost as she was in the enchantmentand novelty of the scene, drinking in Paris as it were at greatgulps, saying to himself they would be at the Opera directly, thenthe Theatre-Francais, the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Place de laConcorde! Every book that had ever passed through his handscontaining illustrations and descriptions of Paris he had read withavidity. He, too, like Louie, though in a different way, was athome in these streets, and hardly needed a look at the map hecarried to find his way. Presently, when he could escape fromLouie, he would go and explore to his heart's content, see all thatthe tourist sees, and then penetrate further, and judge for himselfas to those sweeping and iconoclastic changes which, for its owntyrant's purposes, the Empire had been making in the older city. Ashe thought of the Emperor and the government his gorge rose withinhim. Barbier's talk had insensibly determined all his ideas of theimperial regime. How much longer would France suffer the villainousgang who ruled her? He began an inward declamation in the manner ofHugo, exciting himself as he walked--while all the time it was thespring of 1870 which was swelling and expanding in the veins andbranches of the plane trees above him--May was hurrying on, andWorth lay three short months ahead!

Then suddenly into the midst of his political musings and histraveller's ardour the mind thrust forward a disturbing image--thefigure of a little fair-haired artist. He looked round impatiently. Louie's loiterings began to chafe him. 

'Come along, do, ' he called to her, waking up to the time; 'we shallnever get there. '

'Where?' she demanded. 

'Why, to the Louvre. '

'What's there to see there?'

'It's a great palace. The Kings of France used to live there once. Now they've put pictures and statues into it. You must see it, Louie--everybody does. Come along. '

'I'll not hurry, ' she said perversely. ' I don't care _that_about silly old pictures. '

And she went back to her shop-gazing. David felt for a momentprecisely as he had been used to feel in the old days on the Scout, when he had tried to civilise her on the question of books. And nowas then he had to wrestle with her, using the kind of arguments hefelt might have a chance with her. At last she sulkily gave way, and let him lead on at a quick pace. In the Rue Saint-Honore, indeed, she was once more almost unmanageable; but at last theywere safely on the stairs of the Louvre, and David's brow smoothed, his eye shone again. He mounted the interminable steps with suchgaiety and eagerness that Louie's attention was drawn to him. 

'Whatever do you go that pace for?' she said crossly. 'It's enoughto kill anybody going up this kind of thing!'

'It isn't as bad as the Downfall, ' said David, laughing, 'and I'veseen you get up that fast enough. Come, catch hold of my umbrellaand I'll drag you up. '

Louie reached the top, out of breath, turned into the first room tothe right, and looked scornfully round her. 

'Well I never!' she ejaculated. 'What's the good of this?'

Meanwhile David shot on ahead, beckoning to her to follow. She, however, would take her own pace, and walked sulkily along, lookingat the people who were not numerous enough to please her, and onlyregaining a certain degree of serenity when she perceived that hereas elsewhere people turned to stare after her. 

David meanwhile threw wondering glances at the great Veronese, atRaphael's archangel, at the towering Vandyke, at the 'Virgin of theRocks. ' But he passed them by quickly. Was she here? Could he findher in this wilderness of rooms? His spirits wavered betweendelicious expectancy and the fear of disappointment. The galleryseemed to him full of copyists young and old: beardless_rapins_ laughing and chatting with fresh maidens; old mensitting crouched on high seats with vast canvases before them; orwomen, middle-aged and plain, with knitted shawls round theirshoulders, at work upon the radiant Greuzes and Lancrets; but thatpale golden head--nowhere!

_AT LAST_!

He hurried forward, and there, in front of a Velazquez, he foundher, in the company of two young men, who were leaning over theback of her chair criticising the picture on her easel. 

'Ah, Monsieur David!'

She took up the brush she held with her teeth for a moment, andcarelessly held him out two fingers of her right hand. 

'Monsieur--make a diversion--tell the truth--these gentlemen herehave been making a fool of me. '

And throwing herself back with a little laughing, coquettishgesture, she made room for him to look. 

'Ah, but I forgot; let me present you. M. Alphonse, this is anEnglishman; he is new to Paris, and he is an acquaintance of mine. You are not to play any joke upon him. M. Lenain, this gentlemanwishes to be made acquainted with art; you will undertake hiseducation--you will take him to-night to "Les Trois Rats. " Ipromised for you. '

She threw a merry look at the elder of her two attendants, whoceremoniously took off his hat to David and made a polite speech, in which the word _enchante_ recurred. He was a dark man, witha short black beard, and full restless eye; some ten years olderapparently than the other, who was a dare-devil boy of twenty. 

'_Allons!_ tell me what you think of my picture, M. David. '

The three waited for the answer, not without malice. David lookedat it perplexed. It was a copy of the black and white Infanta, withthe pink rosettes, which, like everything else that Francepossesses from the hand of Velazquez, is to the French artist ofto-day among the sacred things, the flags and battle-cries of hisart. Its strangeness, its unlikeness to anything of the picturekind that his untrained provincial eyes had ever lit upon, tied histongue. Yet he struggled with himself. 

'Mademoiselle, I cannot explain--I cannot find the words. It seemsto me ugly. The child is not pretty nor the dress. But--'

He stared at the picture, fascinated--unable to express himself, and blushing under the shame of his incapacity. 

The other three watched him curiously. 

'Taranne should get hold of him, ' the elder artist murmured to hiscompanion, with an imperceptible nod towards the Englishman. 'Themodels lately have been too common. There was a rebellion yesterdayin the _atelier de femmes_; one and all declared the model wasnot worth drawing, and one and all left. '

'Minxes!' said the other coolly, a twinkle in his wild eye. 'Taranne will have to put his foot down. There are one or twodemons among them; one should make them know their place. '

Lenain threw back his head and laughed--a great, frank laugh, whichbroke up the ordinary discontent of the face agreeably. Thespeaker, M. Alphonse Duchatel, had been already turned out of two_ateliers_ for a series of the most atrocious _charges_on record. He was now with Taranne, on trial, the authoritieskeeping a vigilant eye on him. 

Meanwhile Elise, still leaning back with her eyes on her picture, was talking fast to David, who hung over her, absorbed. She wasexplaining to him some of the Infanta's qualities, pointing to thisand that with her brush, talking a bright, untranslatable artist'slanguage which dazzled him, filled him with an exciting medley ofnew impressions and ideas, while all the time his quick senseresponded with a delightful warmth and eagerness to the personalitybeside him--child, prophetess, egotist, all in one--noticing eachcharacteristic detail, the drooping, melancholy trick of the eyes, the nervous delicacy of the small hand holding the brush. 

'David--_David_! I'm tired of this, I tell you! I'm not goingto stay, so I thought I'd come and tell you. Good-bye!'

He turned abruptly, and saw Louie standing defiantly a few pacesbehind him. 

'What do you want, Louie?' he said impatiently, going up to her. Itwas no longer the same man, the same voice. 

'I want to go. I hate this!'

'I'm not ready, and you can't go by yourself. Do you see'--(in anundertone)--'this is Mademoiselle Delaunay?'

'That don't matter, ' she said sulkily, making no movement. 'If youain't going, I am. '

By this time, however, Elise, as well as the two artists, hadperceived Louie's advent. She got up from her seat with a slightsarcastic smile, and held out her hand. 

'_Bonjour_, Mademoiselle! You forgave me for dat I did lastnight? I ask your pardon--oh, _de tout mon coeur_!'

Even Louie perceived that the tone was enigmatical. She gave aninward gulp of envy, however, excited by the cut of the Frenchgirl's black and white cotton. Then she dropped Elise's hand, andmoved away. 

'Louie!' cried David, pursuing her in despair; 'now just wait halfan hour, there's a good girl, while I look at a few things, andthen afterwards I'll take you to the street where all the bestshops are, and you can look at them as much as you like. '

Louie stood irresolute. 

'What is it?' said Elise to him in French. 'Your sister wants to go?Why, you have only just come!'

'She finds it dull looking at pictures, ' said David, with an angrybrow, controlling himself with difficulty. 'She must have the shops. '

Elise shrugged her shoulders and, turning her head, said a fewquick words that David did not follow to the two men behind her. They all laughed. The artists, however, were both much absorbed inLouie's appearance, and could not apparently take their eyes offher. 

'Ah!' said Elise, suddenly. 

She had recognised some one at a distance, to whom she nodded. Thenshe turned and looked at the English girl, laughed, and caught herby the wrist. 

'Monsieur David, here are Monsieur and Madame Oervin. Have youthought of sending your sister to them? If so, I will present you. Why not? They would amuse her. Madame Cervin would take her to allthe shops, to the races, to the Bois. _Que sais-je_?

All the while she was looking from one to the other. David's facecleared. He thought he saw a way out of this _impasse_. 

'Louie, come here a moment. I want to speak to you. '

And he carried her off a few yards, while the Cervins came up andgreeted the group round the Infanta. A powerfully built, thicksetman, in a grey suit, who had been walking with them, fell back asthey joined Elise Delaunay, and began to examine a Pieter de Hooghewith minuteness. 

Meanwhile David wrestled with his sister. She had much better letMademoiselle Delaunay arrange with these people Then Madame Cervincould take her about wherever she wanted to go. He would make abargain to that effect. As for him, he must and would seeParis--pictures, churches, public buildings. If the Louvre boredher, everything would bore her, and it was impossible either thathe should spend his time at her apron-string, flattening his noseagainst the shop-windows, or that she should go about alone. He wasnot going to have her taken for 'a bad lot, ' and treatedaccordingly, he told her frankly, with an imperious tightening ofall his young frame. He had discovered some time since that it wasnecessary to be plain with Louie. 

She hated to be disposed of on any occasion, except by her own willand initiative, and she still made difficulties for the sake ofmaking them, till he grew desperate. Then, when she had pushed hispatience to the very last point, she gave way. 

'You tell her she's to do as I want her, ' she said, threateningly. 'I won't stay if she doesn't. And I'll not have her paid too much. '

David led her back to the rest. 

'My sister consents. Arrange it if you can, Mademoiselle, ' he saidimploringly to Elise. 

A series of quick and somewhat noisy colloquies followed, watchedwith disapproval by the _gardien_ near, who seemed to be onceor twice on the point of interfering. 

Mademoiselle Delaunay opened the matter to Madame Cervin, a short, stout woman, with no neck, and a keen, small eye. Money was herdaily and hourly preoccupation, and she could have kissed the hemof Elise Delaunay's dress in gratitude for these few francs thusplaced in her way. It was some time now since she had lost her lastboarder, and had not been able to obtain another. She took Davidaside, and, while her look sparkled with covetousness, explained tohim volubly all that she would do for Louie, and for how much. Andshe could talk some English too--certainly she could. Her educationhad been _excellent_, she was thankful to say. 

'_Mon Dieu, qu'elle est belle!_' she wound up. 'Ah, Monsieur, you do very right to entrust your sister to me. A young fellow likeyou--no!--that is not _convenable_. But I--I will be a dragon. Make your mind quite easy. With me all will go well. '

Louie stood in an impatient silence while she was being thus talkedover, exchanging looks from time to time with the two artists, whohad retired a little behind Mademoiselle Delaunay's easel, and fromthat distance were perfectly competent to let the bold-eyed Englishgirl know what they thought of her charms. 

At last the bargain was concluded, and the Cervins walked away withLouie in charge. They were to take her to a restaurant, then showher the Rue Royale and the Rue de la Paix, and, finally--Davidmaking no demur whatever about the expense--there was to be anafternoon excursion through the Bois to Longchamps, where some ofthe May races were being run. 

As they receded, the man in grey, before the Pieter de Hooghe, looked up, smiled, dropped his eyeglass, and resumed his placebeside Madame Cervin. She made a gesture of introduction, and hebowed across her to the young stranger. 

For the first time Elise perceived him. A look of annoyance anddisgust crossed her face. 

'Do you see, ' she said, turning to Lenain; 'there is that animal, Montjoie? He did well to keep his distance. What do the Cervinswant with him?'

The others shrugged their shoulders. 

'They say his Maenad would be magnificent if he could keep soberenough to finish her, ' said Lenain; 'it is his last chance; he willgo under altogether if he fails; he is almost done for already. '

'And what a gift!' said Alphonse, in a lofty tone of criticalregret. 'He should have been a second Barye. _Ah, la vieParisienne--la maudite vie Parisienne_!'

Again Lenain exploded. 

'Come and lunch, you idiot, ' he said, taking the lad's arm; 'forwhom are you posing?'

But before they departed, they inquired of David in the politestway what they could do for him. He was a stranger to Mollie. Delaunay's acquaintance; they were at his service. Should they takehim somewhere at night? David, in an effusion of gratitude, suggested 'Les Trois Rats. ' He desired greatly to see the artistworld, he said. Alphonse grinned. An appointment was made for eighto'clock, and the two friends walked off. 

CHAPTER IV

David and Elise Delaunay thus found themselves left alone. Shestood a moment irresolutely before her canvas, then sat down again, and took up her brushes. 

'I cannot thank you enough, Mademoiselle, ' the young fellow beganshyly, while the hand which held his stick trembled a little. 'Wecould never have arranged that affair for ourselves. '

She coloured and bent over her canvas. 

'I don't know why I troubled myself, ' she said, in a curiousirritable way. ' Because you are kind!' he cried, his charming smilebreaking. 'Because you took pity on a pair of strangers, like theguardian angel that you are!'

The effect of the foreign language on him leading him to a more setand literary form of expression than he would have naturally used, was clearly marked in the little outburst. 

Elise bit her lip, frowned and fidgeted, and presently looked himstraight in the face. 

'Monsieur David, warn your sister that that man with the Cervinsthis morning--the man in grey, the sculptor, M. Montjoie--is adisreputable scoundrel that no decent woman should know. '

David was taken aback. 

'And Madame Cervin--'

Elise raised her shoulders. 

'I don't offer a solution, ' she said; 'but I have warned you. '

'Monsieur Cervin has a somewhat strange appearance, ' said David, hesitating. 

And, in fact, while the negotiations had been going on there hadstood beside the talkers a shabby, slouching figure of a man, withlongish grizzled hair and a sleepy eye--a strange, remote creature, who seemed to take very little notice of what was passing beforehim. From various indications, however, in the conversation, Davidhad gathered that this looker-on must be the former _prix deRome_. 

Elise explained that Monsieur Carvin was the wreck of a genius. Inhis youth he had been the chosen pupil of Ingres and HippolyteFlandrin, had won the _prix de Rome_, and after his threeyears in the Villa Medicis had come home to take up what wasexpected to be a brilliant career. Then for some mysterious reasonhe had suddenly gone under, disappeared from sight, and the wavesof Paris had closed over him. When he reappeared he was broken inhealth, and married to a retired modiste, upon whose money he wasliving. He painted bad pictures intermittently, but spent most ofhis time in hanging about his old haunts--the Louvre, the Salon, the various exhibitions, and the dealers, where he was commonlyregarded by the younger artists who were on speaking terms with himas a tragic old bore, with a head of his own worth painting, however if he could be got to sit--for an augur or a chief priest. 

'It was _absinthe_ that did it, ' said Elise calmly, taking afresh charge into her brush, and working away at the blacktrimmings of the Infanta's dress. 'Every day, about four, hedisappears into the Boulevard. Generally, Madame Cervin drives himlike a sheep; but when four o'clock comes she daren't interferewith him. If she did, he would be unmanageable altogether. So hetakes his two hours or so, and when he comes back there is not muchamiss with him. Sometimes he is excited, and talks quitebrilliantly about the past--sometimes he is nervous and depressed, starts at a sound, and storms about the noises in the street. Thenshe hurries him off to bed, and the next morning he is quite meekagain, and tries to paint. But his hand shakes, and he can't see. So he gives it up, and calls to her to put on her things. Then theywander about Paris, till four o'clock comes round again, and hegives her the slip--always with some elaborate pretence of other. Oh! she takes it quietly. Other vices might give her more trouble. '

The tone conveyed the affectation of a complete knowledge of theworld, which saw no reason whatever to be ashamed of itself. Thegirl was just twenty, but she had lived for years, first with adisreputable father, and then in a perpetual _camaraderie_, within the field of art, with men of all sorts and kinds. There arecertain feminine blooms which a _milieu_ like this effaceswith deadly rapidity. 

For the first time David was jarred. The idealist in him recoiled. His conscience, too, was roused about Louie. He had handed herover, it seemed, to the custody of a drunkard and his wife, who hadimmediately thrown her into the company of a man no decent womanought to know. And Mademoiselle Delaunay had led him into it. Theguardian angel speech of a few moments before rang in his earsuncomfortably. 

Moreover, whatever rebellions his young imagination might harbour, whatever license in his eyes the great passions might claim, he hadmaintained for months and years past a practical asceticism, whichhad left its mark. The young man who had starved so gaily onsixpence a day that he might read and learn, had nothing butimpatience and disgust for the glutton and the drunkard. It was akind of physical repulsion. And the woman's light indulgent toneseemed for a moment to divide them. 

Elise looked round. Why this silence in her companion?

In an instant she divined him. Perhaps her own conscience was noteasy. Why had she meddled in the young Englishman's affairs at all?For a whim? Out of a mere good-natured wish to rid him of histroublesome sister; or because his handsome looks, his _naivete_, and his eager admiration of herself amused and excited her, andshe did not care to be baulked of them so soon? At any rate, she found refuge in an outburst of temper. 

'Ah!' she said, after a moment's pause and scrutiny. 'I see! Youthink I might have done better for your sister than send her tolodge with a drunkard--that I need not have taken so much troubleto give you good advice for that! You repent your little remarksabout guardian angels! You are disappointed in me!--you distrustme!'

She turned back to her easel and began to paint with headlongspeed, the small hand flashing to and fro, the quick breath risingand falling tempestuously. 

He was dismayed--afraid, and he began to make excuses both forhimself and her. It would be all right; he should be close by, andif there were trouble he could take his sister away. 

She let her brushes fall into her lap with an exclamation. 

'Listen!' she said to him, her eyes blazing_--why, he could not forthe life of him understand. 'There will be no trouble. What I toldyou means nothing open--or disgusting. Your sister will noticenothing unless you tell her. But I was candid with you--I alwaysam. I told you last night that I had no scruples. You thought itwas a woman's exaggeration; it was the literal truth! If a mandrinks, or is vicious, so long as he doesn't hurl the furniture atmy head, or behave himself offensively to me, what does it matterto me! If he drinks so that he can't paint, and he wants to paint, well!--then he seems to me another instance of the charming way inwhich a kind Providence has arranged this world. I am sorry forhim, _tout bonnement_! If I could give the poor devil a handout of the mud, I would; if not, well, then, no sermons! I take himas I find him; if he annoys me, I call in the police. But as tohiding my face and canting, not at all! That is your Englishway--it is the way of our _bourgeoisie. _ It is not mine. Idon't belong to the respectables--I would sooner kill myself adozen times over. I can't breathe in their company. I know how toprotect myself; none of the men I meet dare to insult me; that ismy idiosyncrasy--everyone has his own. But I have my ideas, andnobody else matters a fig to me. --So now, Monsieur, if you regretour forced introduction of last night, let me wish you a goodmorning. It will be perfectly easy for your sister to find someexcuse to leave the Cervins. I can give you the addresses ofseveral cheap hotels where you and she will be extremelycomfortable, and where neither I nor Monsieur Cervin will annoyyou!'

David stared at her. He had grown very pale. She, too, was white tothe lips. The violence and passion of her speech had exhausted her;her hands trembled in her lap. A wave of emotion swept through him. Her words were insolently bitter. Why, then, this impression ofsomething wounded and young and struggling--at war with itself andthe world, proclaiming loneliness and _Sehnsucht_, while itflung anger and reproach?

He dropped on one knee, hardly knowing what he did. Most of thestudents about had left their work for a while; no one was in sightbut a _gardien_, whose back was turned to them, and a youngman in the remote distance. He picked up a brush she had let fall, pressed it into her reluctant hand, and laid his forehead againstthe hand for an instant. 

'You misunderstand me, ' he said, with a broken, breathlessutterance. 'You are quite wrong--quite mistaken. There are not suchthoughts in me as you think. The world matters nothing to me, either. I am alone, too; I have always been alone. You meanteverything that was heavenly and kind--you must have meant it. I ama stupid idiot! But I could be your friend--if you would permit it. '

He spoke with an extraordinary timidity and slowness. He forgot allhis scruples, all pride--everything. As he knelt there, so close toher delicate slimness, to the curls on her white neck, to thequivering lips and great, defiant eyes, she seemed to him once morea being of another clay from himself--beyond any criticism hisaudacity could form. He dared hardly touch her, and in his heartthere swelled the first irrevocable wave of young passion. Sheraised her hand impetuously and began to paint again. But suddenlya tear dropped on to her knee. She brushed it away, and her wildsmile broke. 

'Bah!' she said, 'what a scene, what a pair of children! What was itall about? I vow I haven't an idea. You are an excellent_farceur. _ Monsieur David! One can see well that you have readGeorge Sand. '

He sat down on a little three-legged stool she had brought withher, and held her box open on his knee. In a minute or two theywere talking as though nothing had happened. She was giving him afresh lecture on Velazquez, and he had resumed his role of pupiland listener. But their eyes avoided each other, and once when, intaking a tube from the box he held, her fingers brushed against hishand, she flushed involuntarily and moved her chair a foot furtheraway. 

'Who is that?' she asked, suddenly looking round the corner of hercanvas. '_Mon Dieu!_ M. Regnault! How does he come here? Theytold me he was at Granada. '

She sat transfixed, a joyous excitement illuminating every feature. And there, a few yards from them, examining the Rembrandt 'Supperat Emmaus' with a minute and absorbed attention, was the young manhe had noticed in the distance a few minutes before. As Elisespoke, the new-comer apparently heard his name, and turned. He putup his eyeglass, smiled, and took off his hat. 

'Mademoiselle Delaunay! I find you where I left you, at the feet ofthe master! Always at work! You are indefatigable. Taranne tells megreat things of you. "Ah, " he says, "if the men would work like thewomen!" I assure you, he makes us smart for it. May I look?Good--very good! a great improvement on last year--stronger, moreknowledge in it. That hand wants study--but you will soon put itright. Ah, Velazquez! That a man should be great, one can bearthat, but so great! It is an offence to the rest of us mortals. Butone cannot realise him out of Madrid. I often sigh for the months Ispent copying in the Museo. There is a repose of soul in copying agreat master--don't you find it? One rests from one's own effortsawhile--the spirit of the master descends into yours, gently, profoundly. '

He stood beside her, smiling kindly, his hat and gloves in hishands, perfectly dressed, an air of the great world about his lookand bearing which differentiated him wholly from all other personswhom David had yet seen in Paris. In physique, too, he was totallyunlike the ordinary Parisian type. He was a young athlete, vigorous, robust, broad-shouldered, tanned by sun and wind. Onlyhis blue eye--so subtle, melancholy, passionate--revealed theartist and the thinker. 

Elise was evidently transported by his notice of her. She talked tohim eagerly of his pictures in the Salon, especially of a certain'Salome, ' which, as David presently gathered, was the sensation ofthe year. She raved about the qualities of it--the words colour, poignancy, force recurring in the quick phrases. 

'No one talks of your _success_ now, Monsieur. It is anotherword. _C'est la gloire elle-meme qui vous parle a l'oreille!_'

As she let fall the most characteristic of all French nouns, aslight tremor passed across the young man's face. But the lookwhich succeeded it was one of melancholy; the blue eyes took asteely hardness. 

'Perhaps a lying spirit, Mademoiselle. And what matter, so long aseverything one does disappoints oneself? What a tyrant is art!--insatiable, adorable! You know it. We serve our king on ourknees, and he deals us the most miserly gifts. '

'It is the service itself repays, ' she said, eagerly, her chestheaving. 

'True!--most true! But what a struggle always!--no rest--nocontent. And there is no other way. One must seek, grope, toil--then produce rapidly--in a flash--throw what you have donebehind you--and so on to the next problem, and the next. There isno end to it--there never can be. But you hardly came here thismorning, I imagine, Mademoiselle, to hear me prate! I wish you goodday and good-bye. I came over for a look at the Salon, butto-morrow I go back to Spain. I can't breathe now for long awayfrom my sun and my South! Adieu, Mademoiselle. I am told yourprospects, when the voting comes on, are excellent. May the godsinspire the jury!'

He bowed, smiled, and passed on, carrying his lion-head and kinglypresence down the gallery, which had now filled up again, andwhere, so David noticed, person after person turned as he came nearwith the same flash of recognition and pleasure he had seen uponElise's face. A wild jealousy of the young conqueror invaded theEnglish lad. 

'Who is he?' he asked. 

Elise, womanlike, divined him in a moment. She gave him a sidelongglance and went back to her painting. 

'That, ' she said quietly, 'is Henri Regnault. Ah, you know nothingof our painters. I can't make you understand. For me he is a younggod--there is a halo round his head. He has grasped his fame--thefame we poor creatures are all thirsting for. It began last yearwith the Prim--General Prim on horseback--oh, magnificent!--apassion!--an energy! This year it is the "Salome. " About--Gautier--all the world--have lost their heads over it. Ifyou go to see it at the Salon, you will have to wait your turn. Crowds go every day for nothing else. Of course there are murmurs. They say the study of Fortuny has done him harm. Nonsense! Peoplediscuss him because he is becoming a master--no one discusses thenonentities. _They_ have no enemies. Then he is sculptor, musician, athlete--well-born besides--all the world is his friend. But with it all so simple--_bon camarade_ even for poorscrawlers like me. _Je l'adore!_'

'So it seems, ' said David. 

The girl smiled over her painting. But after a bit she looked upwith a seriousness, nay, a bitterness, in her siren's face, whichastonished him. 

'It is not amusing to take you in--you are too ignorant. What doyou suppose Henri Regnault matters to me? His world is as far abovemine as Velazquez' art is above my art. But how can a foreignerunderstand our shades and grades? Nothing but _success_, but_la gloire_, could ever lift me into his world. Then indeed Ishould be everybody's equal, and it would matter to nobody that Ihad been a Bohemian and a _declassee_. 

She gave a little sigh of excitement, and threw her head back tolook at her picture, David watched her. 

'I thought, ' he said ironically, 'that a few minutes ago you wereall for Bohemia. I did not suspect these social ambitions. '

'All women have them--all artists deny them, ' she said, recklessly. 'There, explain me as you like, Monsieur David. But don't read myriddle too soon, or I shall bore you. Allow me to ask you aquestion. '

She laid down her brushes and looked at him with the utmostgravity. His heart beat--he bent forward. 

'Are you ever hungry, Monsieur David?'

He sprang up, half enraged, half ashamed. 

'Where can we get some food?'

'That is my affair, ' she said, putting up her brushes. 'Be humble, Monsieur, and take a lesson in Paris. '

And out they went together, he beside himself with the delight ofaccompanying her, and proudly carrying her box and satchel. How herlittle feet slipped in and out of her pretty dress--how, as theystood on the top of the great flight of stairs leading down intothe court of the Louvre, the wind from outside blew back the curlsfrom her brow, and ruffled the violets in her hat, the black laceabout her tiny throat. It was an enchantment to follow and to serveher. She led him through the Tuileries Gardens and the Place de laConcorde to the Champs-Elysees. The fountains leapt in the sun; theriver blazed between the great white buildings of its banks; to theleft was the gilded dome of the Invalides, and the mass of theCorps Legislatif, while in front of them rose the long ascent tothe Arc de l'Etoile set in vivid green on either hand. Everywherewas space, glitter, magnificence. The gaiety of Paris entered intothe Englishman, and took possession. 

Presently, as they wandered up the Champs-Elysees, they passed agreat building to the left. Elise stopped and clasped her hands infront of her with a little nervous, spasmodic gesture. 

'That, ' she said, 'is the Salon. My fate lies there. When we havehad some food, I will take you in to see. '

She led him a little further up the Avenue, then took him asidethrough cunningly devised labyrinths of green till they came upon alittle cafe restaurant among the trees, where people sat under anawning, and the wind drove the spray of a little fountain hitherand thither among the bushes. It was gay, foreign, romantic, unlikeanything David had ever seen in his northern world. He sat down, with Barbier's stories running in his head. Mademoiselle Delaunaywas George Sand--independent, gifted, on the road to fame like thatgreat _declassee_ of old; and he was her friend and comrade, ahumble soldier, a camp follower, in the great army of letters. 

Their meal was of the lightest. This descent on the Champs--Elyseeshad been a freak on Elise's part, who wished to do nothing so_banal_ as take her companion to the Palais Royal. But therestaurant she had chosen, though of a much humbler kind than thosewhich the rich tourist commonly associates with this part of Paris, was still a good deal more expensive than she had rashly supposed. She opened her eyes gravely at the charges; abused herselfextravagantly for a lack of _savoir vivre_; and both with oneaccord declared it was too hot to eat. But upon such eggs and suchgreen peas as they did allow themselves--a _portion_ of each, scrupulously shared--David at any rate, in his traveller's ardour, was prepared to live to the end of the chapter. 

Afterwards, over the coffee and the cigarettes, Elise taking herpart in both, they lingered for one of those hours which make theglamour of youth. Confidences flowed fast between them. His Frenchgrew suppler and more docile, answered more truly to theindividuality behind it. He told her of his bringing up, of hiswandering with the sheep on the mountains, of his reading among theheather, of 'Lias and his visions, of Hannah's cruelties andLouie's tempers--that same idyll of peasant life to which Dora hadlistened months before. But how differently told! Each differentlistener changes the tale, readjusts the tone. But here also thetale pleased. Elise, for all her leanings towards new schools inart, had the Romantic's imagination and the Romantic's relish forthings foreign and unaccustomed. The English boy and his storyseemed to her both charming and original. Her artist's eye followedthe lines of the ruffled black head and noted the red-brown of theskin. She felt a wish to draw him--a wish which had entirelyvanished in the case of Louie. 

'Your sister has taken a dislike to me, ' she said to him once, coolly. 'And as for me, I am afraid of her. Ah! and she broke myglass!'

She shivered, and a look of anxiety and depression invaded hersmall face. He guessed that she was thinking of her pictures, andbegan timidly to speak to her about them. When they returned to theworld of art, his fluency left him; he felt crushed beneath theweight of his own ignorance and her accomplishment. 

'Come and see them!' she said, springing up. 'I am tired of myInfanta. Let her be awhile. Come to the Salon, and I will show you"Salome. " Or are you sick of pictures? What do you want to see?_Ca m'est egal_. I can always go back to my work. '

She spoke with a cavalier lightness which teased and piqued him. 

'I wish to go where you go, ' he said flushing, 'to see what you see. '

She shook her little head. 

'No compliments, Monsieur David. We are serious persons, you and I. Well, then, for a couple of hours, _soyons camarades!_'

Of those hours, which prolonged themselves indefinitely, David'safter remembrance was somewhat crowded and indistinct. He couldnever indeed think of Regnault's picture without a shudder, sopoignant was the impression it made upon him under the stimulus ofElise's nervous and passionate comments. It represented thedaughter of Herodias resting after the dance, with the dish uponher knee which was to receive the head of the saint. Her mass ofblack hair--the first strong impression of the picture--stood outagainst the pale background, and framed the smiling sensual face, broadly and powerfully made, like the rest of the body, and knowingneither thought nor qualm. The colour was a bewilderment ofscarlets and purples, of yellow and rose-colour, of turtle-greysand dazzling flesh-tints--bathed the whole of it in the searchinglight of the East. The strangeness, the science of it, itsextraordinary brilliance and energy, combined with its total lackof all emotion, all pity, took indelible hold of the English lad'suntrained provincial sense. He dreamt of it for nights afterwards. 

For the rest--what whirl and confusion! He followed Elise throughsuffocating rooms, filled with the liveliest crowd he had everseen. She was constantly greeted, surrounded, carried off to lookat this and that. Her friends and acquaintances, indeed, whethermen or women, seemed all to treat her in much the same way. Therewas complete, and often noisy, freedom of address and discussionbetween them. She called all the men by their surnames, and she wason half mocking, half caressing terms with the women, who seemed toDavid to be generally art students, of all ages and aspects. Butnobody took any liberties with her. She had her place, and that oneof some predominance. Clearly she had already the privileges of aneccentric, and a certain cool ascendency of temperament. Her littlefigure fluttered hither and thither, gathering a train, thenshaking it off again. Sometimes and her friends, finding the heatintolerable, and wanting space for talk, would overflow into thegreat central hall, with its cool palms and statues; and there Davidwould listen to torrents of French artistic theory, anecdote, and_blague_, till his head whirled, and French cleverness--conveyedto him in what, to the foreigner, is the most exquisite and themost tantalising of all tongues--seemed to him superhuman. 

As to what he saw, after 'Salome, ' he remembered vividly only threepictures--Elise Delaunay's two--a portrait and a workshopinterior--before which he stood, lost in naive wonder at hertalent; and the head of a woman, with a thin pale face, reddish-brown hair, and a look of pantherish grace and force, whichhe was told was the portrait of an actress at the Odeon who wasmaking the world stare--Mademoiselle Bernhardt. For the rest he hadthe vague, distracting impression of a new world--of nude horrorsand barbarities of all sorts--of things licentious or cruel, whichyet, apparently, were all of as much value in the artist's eye, andto be discussed with as much calm or eagerness, as theirneighbours. One moment he loathed what he saw, and threw himselfupon his companion, with the half-coherent protests of an Englishidealism, of which she scarcely understood a word; the next he losthimself in some landscape which had torn the very heart out of anexquisite mood of nature, or in some scene of peasant life--so trueand living that the scents of the fields and the cries of theanimals were once more about him, and he lived his childhood overagain. 

Perhaps the main idea which the experience left with him was one ofa goading and intoxicating _freedom_. His country lay in thebackground of his mind as the symbol of all dull convention andrespectability. He was in the land of intelligence, where nothingis prejudged, and all experiments are open. 

When they came out, it was to get an ice in the shade, and then towander to and fro, watching the passers-by--the young men playing astrange game with disks under the trees--the nurses andchildren--the ladies in the carriages--and talking, with a quick, perpetual advance towards intimacy, towards emotion. More and morethere grew upon her the charm of a certain rich poetic intelligencethere was in him, stirring beneath his rawness and ignorance, struggling through the fetters of language; and in response, as theevening wore on, she threw off her professional airs, and sank theegotist out of sight. She became simpler, more childish; hervariable, fanciful youth answered to the magnetism of his. 

At last he said to her, as they stood by the Arc de l'Etoile, looking down towards Paris:

'The sun is just going down--this day has been the happiest of mylife!'

The low intensity of the tone startled her. Then she had a movementof caprice, of superstition. 

'_Alors--assez_! Monsieur David, stay where you are. Notanother step!--_Adieu!_'

Astonished and dismayed, he turned involuntarily. But, in the crowdof people passing through the Arch, she had slipped from him, andhe had lost her beyond recovery. Moreover, her tone wasperemptory--he dared not pursue and anger her. 

Minutes passed while he stood, spell--and trance-bound, in theshadow of the Arch. Then, with the long and labouring breath, thesudden fatigue of one who has leapt in a day from one plane of lifeto another--in whom a passionate and continuous heat of feeling hasfor the time burnt up the nervous power--he moved on eastwards, down the Champs-Elysees. The sunset was behind him, and the treesthrew long shadows across his path. Shade and sun spaces alikeseemed to him full of happy crowds. The beautiful city laughed andmurmured round him. Nature and man alike bore witness with his ownrash heart that all is divinely well with the world--let thecynics and the mourners say what they will. His hour had come, and without a hesitation or a dread he rushed upon it. Passionand youth--ignorance and desire--have never met in madder ormore reckless dreams than those which filled the mind of DavidGrieve as he wandered blindly home. 

CHAPTER V

As David climbed the garret stairs to his room, the thought ofLouie flashed across his mind for the first time since the morning. He opened the door and looked round. Yes; all her things were gone. She had taken up her abode with the Cervins. 

A certain anxiety and discomfort seized him; before going out tothe Boulevard to snatch some food in preparation for his evening atthe 'Trois Rats' he descended to the landing below and rang theCervins' bell. 

A charwoman, dirty and tired with much cleaning, opened to him. 

No, Madame was not at home. No one was at home, and the dinner wasspoiling. Had they not been seen all day? Certainly. They had comein about six o'clock _avec une jeune personne_ and M. Montjoie. She thought it probable that they were all at that moment downbelow, in the studio of M. Montjoie. 

David already knew his way thither, and was soon standing outsidethe high black door with the pane of glass above it to which MadameMerichat had originally directed him. While he waited for an answerto his ring he looked about him. He was in a sort of yard which wasalmost entirely filled up by the sculptor's studio, a longstructure lighted at one end as it seemed from the roof, and at theother by the usual north window. At the end of the yard rose a hugemany-storied building which seemed to be a factory of some sort. David's Lancashire eye distinguished machinery through themonotonous windows, and the figures of the operatives; it took notealso of the fact that the rooms were lit up and work still going onat seven o'clock. All around were the ugly backs of tall houses, every window flung open to this May heat. The scene was squalid and_triste_ save for the greenish blue of the evening sky, andthe flight of a few pigeons round the roof of the factory. 

A man in a blouse came at last, and led the way in when David askedfor Madame Cervin. They passed through the inner studio full of aconfusion of clay models and casts to which the dust of months gavethe look and relief of bronze. 

Then the further door opened, and he saw beyond a larger andemptier room; sculptor's work of different kinds, and in variousstages on either side; casts, and charcoal studies on the walls, and some dozen people scattered in groups over the floor, alllooking towards an object on which the fading light from the upperpart of the large window at the end was concentrated. 

What was that figure on its pedestal, that white image which livedand breathed? _Louie?_

The brother stood amazed beside the door, staring while the man inthe blouse retreated, and the persons in the room were too muchoccupied with the spectacle before them to notice the new-comer'sarrival. 

Louie stood upon a low pedestal, which apparently revolved with themodel, for as David entered, Montjoie, the man in the grey suit, with the square, massive head, who had joined the party in theLouvre, ran forward and moved it round slightly. She was in Greekdress, and some yards away from her was the clay study--a maenadwith vine wreath, tambourine, thyrsus, and floating hair--for whichshe was posing. 

Even David was dazzled by the image thus thrown out before him. With her own dress Louie Grieve seemed to have laid aside for themoment whatever common or provincial elements there might be in herstrange and startling beauty. Clothed in the clinging folds of theGreek chiton; neck, arms, and feet bare; the rounded forms of thelimbs showing under the soft stuff; the face almost in profile, leaning to the shoulder, as though the delicate ear were listeningfor the steps of the wine god; a wreath of vine leaves round theblack hair which fell in curly masses about her, sharpening andframing the rosy whiteness of the cheek and neck; one hand lightlyturned back behind her, showing the palm, the other holding atorch; one foot poised on tiptoe, and the whole body lightly bentforward, as though for instant motion:--in this dress and thisattitude, worn and sustained with extraordinary intelligence andaudacity, the wild hybrid creature had risen, as it were, for thefirst time, to the full capacity of her endowment--had eclipsed andyet revealed herself. 

The brother stood speechless, looking from the half-completed studyto his sister. How had they made her understand?--where had she gotthe dress? And such a dress! To the young fellow, who in hispeasant and tradesman experience had never even seen a woman in theordinary low dress of society, it seemed incredible, outrageous. And to put it on for the purpose of posing as a model in a roomfull of strange men--Madame Cervin was the only woman present--hischeek burnt for his sister; and for the moment indignation andbewilderment held him paralysed. 

In front of him a little way, but totally unaware of the stranger'sentrance, were two men whispering and laughing together. One held apiece of paper on a book, and was making a hurried sketch of Louie. Every now and then he drew the attention of his companion to someof the points of the model. David caught a careless phrase or two, and understood just enough of their student's slang to suspect agood deal worse than was actually said. 

Meanwhile Montjoie was standing against an iron pillar, studyingintently every detail of Louie's pose, both hands arched over hisjeyes. 

'_Peste!_ did one ever see so many points combined?' he threw back toa couple of men behind him. 'Too thin--the arms might be better--andthe hands a _little_ common. But for the _ensemble--mon Dieu!_ weshould make Carpeaux's _atelier_ look alive--_hein?_'

'Take care!' laughed a man who was leaning against a cast a fewfeet away, and smoking vigorously. 'She likes it, she has never doneit before, but she likes it. Suppose Carpeaux gets hold of her. Youmay repent showing her, if you want to keep her to yourself. '

'Ah, that right knee wants throwing forward a trifle, ' saidMontjoie in a preoccupied tone, and going up to Louie, he spoke afew words of bad English. 

'Allow me, mademoiselle--put your hand on me--_ainsi_--vile Ichange dis pretty foot. '

Louie looked down bewildered, then at the other men about her, withher great eyes, half exultant, half inquiring. She understoodhardly anything of their French. One of them laughed, and, runningto the clay Maenad, stooped down and touched the knee and ankle, toshow her what was meant. Louie instinctively put her hand onMontjoie's shoulder to steady herself, and he proceeded to move thebare sandalled foot. 

One of the men near him made a remark which David caught. Hesuddenly strode forward. 

'Sir! Have the goodness to tell me how you wish my sister to stand, and I will explain to her. She is not your model!'

The sculptor looked up startled. Everybody stared at the intruder, at the dark English boy, standing with a threatening eye, andtrembling with anger, beside his sister. Then Madame Cervin, clasping her little fat hands with an exclamation of dismay, rushedup to the group, while Louie leapt down from her pedestal and wentto David. 

'What are you interfering for?' she said, pushing Madame Cervinaside and looking him full in the eyes, her own blazing, her chestheaving. 

'You are disgracing yourself, ' he said to her with the sameintensity, fast and low, under his breath, so as to be heard onlyby her. 'How can you expose yourself as a model to these men whomyou never saw before? Let them find their own models; they are apack of brutes!'

But even as he spoke he shrank before the concentrated wrath of herface. 

'I will make you pay for it!' she said. 'I will teach you todomineer. '

Then she turned to Madame Cervin. 

'Come and take it off, please!' she said imperiously. 'It's no goodwhile he is here. '

As she crossed the room with her free wild step, her whitedraperies floating, Montjoie, who had been standing pulling at hismoustaches, and studying the brother from under his heavy brows, joined her, and, stooping, said two or three smiling words in herear. She looked up, tossed her head and laughed--a laugh halfreckless, half _farouche;_ two or three of the other menhurried after them, and presently they made a knot in the furtherroom, Louie calmly waiting for Madame Cervin, and sitting on thepedestal of a bronze group, her beautiful head and white shouldersthrown out against the metal. Montjoie's artist friends--of thekind which haunt a man whose _moeurs_ are gradually bringinghis talent to ruin--stood round her, smoking and talking andstaring at the English girl between whiles. The arrogance withwhich she bore their notice excited them, but they could not talkto her, for she did not understand them. Only Montjoie had a fewwords of English. Occasionally Louie bent forward and lookeddisdainfully through the door. When would David be done prating?

For he, in fact, was grappling with Madame Cervin, who was showinggreat adroitness. This was what had happened according to her. Monsieur Montjoie--a man of astonishing talent, an artistaltogether superior--was in trouble about his statue--could notfind a model to suit him--was in despair. It seemed that he hadheard of mademoiselle's beauty from England, in some way, beforeshe arrived. Then in the studio he had shown her the Greek dress. 

'--There were some words between them--some compliments, Monsieur, I suppose--and your sister said she would pose forhim. I opposed myself. I knew well that mademoiselle was ayoung person _tout-a-fait comme il faut_, that monsieur herbrother might object to her making herself a model for M. Montjoie. _Mais, mon Dieu!_' and the ex-modiste shrugged herround shoulders--'mademoiselle has a will of her own. '

Then she hinted that in an hour's acquaintance mademoiselle hadalready shown herself extremely difficult to manage--monsieur wouldprobably understand that. As for her, she had done everythingpossible. She had taken mademoiselle upstairs and dressed her withher own hands--she had been her maid and companion throughout. Shecould do no more. Mademoiselle would go her own way. 

'Who were all these men?' David inquired, still hot and frowning. 

Madame Cervin rose on tiptoe and poured a series of volublebiographies into his ear. According to her everybody present was aperson of distinction; was at any rate an artist, and a man oftalent. But let monsieur decide. If he was dissatisfied, let himtake his sister away. She had been distressed, insulted, by hisbehaviour. Mademoiselle's box had been not yet unpacked. Let himsay the word and it should be taken upstairs again. 

And she drew away from him, bridling, striking an attitude ofoutraged dignity beside her husband, who had stood behind her in aslouching abstracted silence during the whole scene--so far as herdwarf stature and vulgar little moon-face permitted. 

'We are strangers here, Madame, ' cried David. 'I asked you to takecare of my sister, and I find her like this, before a crowd of menneither she nor I have ever seen before!'

Madame Cervin swept her hand grandiloquently round. 

'Monsieur has his remedy! Let him take his sister. '

He stood silent in a helpless and obvious perplexity. What, saddlehimself afresh after these intoxicating hours of liberty andhappiness? Fetter and embarrass every moment? Shut himself out fromfreedom--from _her_?

Besides, already his first instinctive rage was disappearing. Inthe confusion of this new world he could no longer tell whether hewas right or ridiculous. Had he been playing the Philistine, mistaking a mere artistic convention for an outrage? And Louie wasso likely to submit to his admonitions!

Madame Cervin watched him with a triumphant eye. When he began tostammer out what was in effect an apology, she improved theopportunity, threw off her suave manners, and let him understandwith a certain plain brutality that she had taken Louie's measure. She would do her best to keep the girl in order--it was lucky forhim that he had fallen upon anybody so entirely respectable asherself and her husband--but she would use her own judgment; and ifmonsieur made scenes, she would just turn out her boarder, andleave him to manage as he could. 

She had the whip-hand, and she knew it. He tried to appease her, then discovered that he must go, and went with a hanging head. 

Louie took no notice of him nor he of her, as he passed through theinner studio, but Montjoie came forward to meet the English lad, bending his great head and shoulders with a half-ironic politeness. Monsieur Grieve he feared had mistaken the homage rendered byhimself and his friends to his sister's beauty for an act ofdisrespect--let him be reassured! Such beauty was its own defence. No doubt monsieur did not understand artistic usage. He, Montjoie, made allowance for the fact, otherwise the young man's behaviourtowards himself and his friends would have required explanation. 

The two stood together at the door--David proudly crimson, seekingin vain for phrases that would not come--Montjoie cool andmalicious, his battered weather-beaten face traversed by littlesmiles. Louie was looking on with scornful amusement, and the groupof artists round her could hardly control their mirth. 

He shut the door behind him with the feeling of one who has cut aridiculous figure and beaten a mean retreat. Then, as he neared thebottom of the stairs, he gave himself a great shake, with thegesture of one violently throwing off a weight. Let those whothought that he ought to control Louie, and could control her, comeand see for themselves! He had done what he thought was for thebest--his quick inner sense carefully refrained from attaching anyblame whatever to Mademoiselle Delaunay--and now Louie must go herown gait, and he would go his. He had said his say--and she shouldnot spoil this hoarded, this long-looked-for pleasure. As he passedinto the street, on his way to the Boulevard for some food, hiswalk and bearing had in them a stern and passionate energy. 

He had to hurry back for his appointment with MademoiselleDelaunay's friends of the morning. As he turned into the RueChantal he passed a flower-stall aglow with roses from the southand sweet with narcissus and mignonette. An idea struck him, and hestopped, a happy smile softening away the still lingering tensionof the face. For a few sous he bought a bunch of yellow-eyednarcissus and stepped gaily home with them. He had hardly time toput them in water and to notice that Madame Merichat had madeDubois' squalid abode look much more habitable than before, whenthere was a knock at the door and his two guides stood outside. 

They carried him off at once. David found more of a tongue than hehad been master of in the morning, and the three talked incessantlyas they wound in and out of the streets which cover the face of thehill of Montmartre, ascending gradually towards the place they werein search of. David had heard something of the history of the twofrom Elise Delaunay. Alphonse was a lad of nineteen brimming overwith wild fun and mischief, and perpetually in disgrace with allpossible authorities; the possessor nevertheless of a certaindelicate and subtle fancy which came out in the impressionistlandscapes--many of them touched with a wild melancholy asinexplicable probably to himself as to other people--which hepainted in all his spare moments. The tall black-bearded Lenain wasolder, had been for years in Taranne's _atelier_, was anexcellent draughtsman, and was now just beginning seriously uponthe painting of large pictures for exhibition. In his thin longface there was a pinched and anxious look, as though in theartist's inmost mind there lay hidden the presentiment of failure. 

They talked freely enough of Elise Delaunay, David alternatelywincing and craving for more. What a clever little devil it was!She was burning herself away with ambition and work; Taranneflattered her a good deal; it was absolutely necessary, otherwiseshe would be for killing herself two or three times a week. Oh! shemight get her _mention_ at the Salon. The young Solons sittingin judgment on her thought on the whole she deserved it; two of herexhibits were not bad; but there was another girl in the_atelier_, Mademoiselle Breal, who had more interest in highplaces. However, Taranne would do what he could; he had always madea favourite of the little Elise; and only he could manage her whenshe was in one of her impracticable fits. 

Then Alphonse put the Englishman through a catechism, and at theend of it they both advised him not to trouble his head aboutGeorge Sand. That was all dead and done with, and Balzac not muchless. He might be great, Balzac, but who could be at the troubleof reading him nowadays? Lenain, who was literary, named to himwith enthusiasm Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' and the brothersGoncourt. As for Alphonse, who was capable, however, of occasionalexcursions into poetry, and could quote Musset and Hugo, the_feuilletons_ in the 'Gaulois' or the 'Figaro' seemed, on thewhole, to provide him with as much fiction as he desired. He wasemphatically of opinion that the artist wants no books; a littlepoetry, perhaps, did no harm; but literature in painting was thevery devil. Then perceiving that between them they had puzzledtheir man, Alphonse would have proceeded to 'cram' him in the mostapproved style, but that Lenain interposed, and a certain coolingof the Englishman's bright eye made success look unpromising. Finally the wild fellow clapped David on the back and assured himthat 'Les Trois Rats' would astonish him. 'Ah! here we are. '

As he spoke they turned a corner, and a blaze of light burst uponthem, coming from what seemed to be a gap in the street face, ahouse whereof the two lower stories were wall--and windowless, though not in the manner of the ordinary cafe, seeing that the openparts were raised somewhat above the pavement. 

'The patron saint!' said Alphonse, stopping with a grin andpointing. Following the finger with his eye David caught afantastic sign swinging above him: a thin iron crescent, andsitting up between its two tips a lean black rat, its sharp nose inthe air, its tail curled round its iron perch, while two othercreatures of the same kind crept about him, the one clinging to thelower tip of the crescent, the other peering down from the top onthe king-rat in the middle. Below the sign, and heavily framed bythe dark overhanging eave, the room within was clearly visible fromthe street. From the background of its black oak walls andfurniture emerged figures, lights, pictures, above all an imposing_cheminee_ advancing far into the floor, a high, fantasticstructure also of black oak like the panelling of the room, butoverrun with chains of black rats, carved and combined with a wild_diablerie_, and lit by numerous lights in branching ironwork. The dim grotesque shapes of the pictures, the gesticulating, shouting crowd in front of them, the mediaevalism of the room andof that strange sign dangling outside: these things took theEnglish lad's excited fancy and he pressed his way in behind hiscompanions. He forgot what they had been telling him; his pulsebeat to the old romantic tune; poets, artists, talkers--here he wasto find them. 

David's two companions exchanged greetings on all sides, laughingand shouting like the rest. With difficulty they found a table in aremote corner, and, sitting down, ordered coffee. 

'Alphonse! _mon cher!_'

A young man sitting at the next table turned round upon them, slapped Alphonse on the shoulder, and stared hard at David. He hadfine black eyes in a bronzed face, a silky black beard, and longhair _a la lion_, that is to say, thrown to one side of thehead in a loose mane-like mass. 

'I have just come from the Salon. Not bad--Regnault? _Hein?_'

'_Non--il arrivera, celui-la_, ' said the other calmly. 

'As for the other things from the Villa Medici fellows, ' said thefirst speaker, throwing his arm round the back of his chair, andtwisting it round so as to front them, 'they make me sick. I shouldhardly do my fire the injustice of lighting it with some of them. '

'All the same, ' replied Alphonse stoutly, 'that Campagna scene of D. 's is well done. '

'Literature, _mon cher_! literature!' cried the unknown, 'andwhat the deuce do we want with literature in painting?'

He brought his fist down violently on the table. 

'_Connu_, ' said Alphonse scornfully. 'Don't excite yourself. But the story in D. 's picture doesn't matter a halfpenny. Who careswhat the figures are doing? It's the brush work and the values Ilook to. How did he get all that relief--that brilliance? Nosunshine--no local colour--and the thing glows like a Rembrandt!'

The boy's mad blue eyes took a curious light, as though some innerenthusiasm had stirred. 

'_Peuh_! we all know you, Alphonse. Say what you like, youwant something else in a picture than painting. That'll damn you, and make your fortune some day, I warn you. Now _I_ have got apicture on the easel that will make the _bourgeois_ skip. '

And the speaker passed a large tremulous hand through his waves ofhair, his lip also quivering with the nervousness of a manoverworked and overdone. 

'You'll not send it to the Salon, I imagine, ' said another manbeside him, dryly. He was fair, small and clean-shaven, worespectacles, and had the look of a clerk or man of business. 

'Yes, I shall, ' cried the other violently--his name wasDumesnil--'I'll fling it at their heads. That's all our school cando--make a scandal. '

'Well, that has even been known to make money, ' said the other, fingering his watch-chain with a disagreeable little smile. 

'Money!' shouted Dumesnil, and swinging round to his own tableagain he poured out hot denunciations of the money-grabbingreptiles of to-day who shelter themselves behind the sacred name ofart. Meanwhile the man at whom it was all levelled sipped hiscoffee quietly and took no notice. 

'Ah, a song!' cried Alphonse. 'Lenain, _vois-tu_? It's thatlittle devil Perinot. He's been painting churches down nearToulouse, his own country. Saints by the dozen, like this, ' andAlphonse drooped his eyes and crossed his limp hands, taking offthe frescoed mediaeval saint for an instant, as only the Parisian_gamin_ can do such things. 'You should see him with a _cure_. However, the _cures_ don't follow him here, more's the pity. Ah! _tres bien--tres bien_!'

These plaudits were called out by some passages on the guitar withwhich the singer was prefacing his song. His chair had been mountedon to a table, so that all the world could see and hear. A hush ofdelighted attention penetrated the room; and outside, in the street, David could see dark forms gathering on the pavement. 

The singer was a young man, undersized and slightly deformed, withclose-cut hair, and a large face, droll, pliant and ugly as agutta-percha mask. Before he opened his lips the audience laughed. 

David listened with all his ears, feeling through every fibre thepiquant strangeness of the scene--alive with the foreigner'scuriosity, and with youth's pleasure in mere novelty. And whatclever fellows, what dash, what _camaraderie!_ That oldimaginative drawing towards France and the French was becomingsomething eagerly personal, combative almost, --and in thebackground of his mind throughout was the vibrating memory of theday just past--the passionate sense of a new life. 

The song was tumultuously successful. The whole crowded_salle_, while it was going on, was one sea of upturned faces, and it was accompanied at intervals by thunders of applause, givenout by means of sticks, spoons, fists, or anything else that mightcome handy. It recounted the adventures of an artist and his model. As it proceeded, a slow crimson rose into the English lad's cheek, overspread his forehead and neck. He sat staring at the singer, orlooking round at the absorbed attention and delight of hiscompanions. By the end of it David, his face propped on his hands, was trying nervously to decipher the names and devices cut in thewood of the table on which he leant. His whole being was in a surgeof physical loathing--the revulsion of feeling was bewildering andcomplete. So this was what Frenchmen thought of women, what theycould say of them, when the mask was off, and they were at theirease. The witty brutality, the naked coarseness of the thingscourged the boy's shrinking sense. Freedom, passion--yes! but_this!_ In his wild recoil he stood again under the Arc deTriomphe watching her figure disappear. Ah! pardon! That he shouldbe listening at all seemed to a conscience, an imaginationquickened by first love, to be an outrage to women, to love, toher!

_Yet_--how amusing it was! how irresistible, as the firstshock subsided, was the impression of sparkling verse, of anastonishing mimetic gift in the singer! Towards the end he had justmade up his mind to go on the first pretext, when he found himself, to his own disgust, shaking with laughter. 

He recovered himself after a while, resolved to stay it out, andbetrayed nothing. The comments made by his two companions on thesong--consisting mainly of illustrative anecdote--were worthy ofthe occasion. David sat, however, without flinching, his black eyeshardening, laughing at intervals. 

Presently the room rose _en bloc_, and there was a movetowards the staircase. 

'The manager, M. Edmond, has come, ' explained Alphonse; 'they aregoing upstairs to the concert-room. They will have a recitationperhaps, --_ombres chinoises, _--music. Come and look at thedrawings before we go. '

And he took his charge round the walls, which were papered withdrawings and sketches, laughing and explaining. The drawings weredone, in the main, according to him, by the artists on the staffsof two illustrated papers which had their headquarters at the'Trois Rats. ' David was especially seized by the innumerable sheetsof animal sketches--series in which some episode of animal life wascarried through from its beginning to a close, sometimes humorous, but more often tragic. In a certain number of them there was a freeimagination, an irony, a pity, which linked them together, markedthem as the conceptions of one brain. Alphonse pointed to them asthe work of a clever fellow, lately dead, who had been launched andsupported by the 'Trois Rats' and its frequenters. One series inparticular, representing a robin overcome by the seduction of aglass of absinthe and passing through all the stages of deliriumtremens, had a grim inventiveness, a fecundity of half humorous, half pathetic fancy, which held David's eye riveted. 

As for the ballet-girl, she was everywhere, with her sisters, themodel and the _grisette_. And the artistic ability shown inthe treatment of her had nowhere been hampered by any Philistinescruple in behalf of decency. 

Upstairs there was the same mixed experience. David found himselfin a corner with his two acquaintances, and four or five others, acouple of journalists, a musician and a sculptor. The conversationranged from art to religion, from religion to style, from style towomen, and all with a perpetual recurrence either to the picturesand successes of the Salon, or to the _liaisons_ of well-knownartists. 

'Why do none of us fellows in the press pluck up courage and tellH. What we really think about those Homeric _machines_ of hiswhich he turns out year after year?' said a journalist, who wassmoking beside him, an older man than the rest of them. 'I have ahundred things I want to say--but H. Is popular--I like himhimself--and I haven't the nerve. But what the devil do we wantwith the Greeks--they painted their world--let us paint ours!Besides, it is an absurdity. I thought as I was looking at H. 'sthings this morning of what Preault used to say of Pradier: "_Ilpartait tous les matins pour la Grece et arrivait tous les soirsRue de Breda. _" "Pose your goddesses as you please--they are_grisettes_ all the same. "'

'All very well for you critics, ' growled a man smoking a long pipebeside him; 'but the artist must live, and the _bourgeois_ willhave subjects. He won't have anything to do with your "notes"--and"impressions"--and "arrangements. " When you present him with theview, served hot, from your four-pair back--he buttons up hispockets and abuses you. He wants his stories and his sentiment. Andwhere the deuce is the sentiment to be got? I should be greatlyobliged to anyone who would point me to a little of the commodity. The Greeks are already ridiculous, --and as for religion--'

The speaker threw back his head and laughed silently. 

'Ah! I agree with you, ' said the other emphatically; 'the religiouspictures this year are really too bad. Christianity is going toofast--for the artist. '

'And the sceptics are becoming bores, ' cried the painter; 'they takethemselves too seriously. It is, after all, only another dogmatism. One should believe in nothing--not even in one's doubts. '

'Yes, ' replied the journalist, knocking out his pipe, with asardonic little smile--'strange fact! One may swim in free thoughtand remain as _banal_ as a bishop all the time. '

'I say, ' shouted a fair-haired youth opposite, 'who has seen C. 'sHoly Family? Who knows where he got his Madonna?'

Nobody knew, and the speaker had the felicity of imparting anentirely fresh scandal to attentive ears. The mixture in the storyof certain brutalities of modern manners with names and thingsstill touching or sacred for the mass of mankind had the oldVoltairean flavour. But somehow, presented in this form and at thismoment, David no longer found it attractive. He sat nursing hisknee, his dark brows drawn together, studying the story-teller, whose florid Norman complexion and blue eyes were already seared bya vicious experience. 

The tale, however, was interrupted and silenced by the first notesof a piano. The room was now full, and a young actor from theGymnase company was about to give a musical sketch. The subject ofit was 'St. Francis and Santa Clara. '

This performance was perhaps more wittily broad than anything whichhad gone before. The audience was excessively amused by it. It wasindeed the triumph of the evening, and nothing could exceed thegrace and point of the little speech in which M. Edmond, themanager of the cafe, thanked the accomplished singer afterwards. 

While it was going on, David, always with that poignant, shrinkingthought of Elise at his heart, looked round to see if there wereany women present. Yes, there were three. Two were young, outrageously dressed, with sickly pretty tired faces. The third wasa woman in middle life, with short hair parted at the side, and astrong, masculine air. Her dress was as nearly as possible that ofa man, and she was smoking vigorously. The rough _bonhomie_ ofher expression and her professional air reminded David once more ofGeorge Sand. An artist, he supposed, or a writer. 

Suddenly, towards the end of the sketch, he became conscious of atall figure behind the singer, a man standing with his hat in hishand, as though he had just come in, and were just going away. Hisfine head was thrown back, his look was calm, David thoughtdisdainful. Bending forward he recognised M. Regnault, the hero ofthe morning. 

Regnault had come in unperceived while the dramatic piece wasgoing on; but it was no sooner over than he was discovered, and the whole _salle_ rose to do him honour. The generosity, theextravagance of the ovation offered to the young painter by thishundred or two of artists and men of letters were very striking tothe foreign eye. David found himself thrilling and applauding withthe rest. The room had passed in an instant from cynicism tosentiment. A moment ago it had been trampling to mud the tenderestfeeling of the past; it was now eagerly alive with the feeling ofthe present. 

The new-comer protested that he had only dropped in, being in theneighbourhood, and must not stay. He was charming to them all, asked after this man's picture and that man's statue, talked alittle about the studio he was organising at Tangiers, and then, shaking hands right and left, made his way through the crowd. 

As he passed David, his quick eye caught the stranger and hepaused. 

'Were you not in the Louvre this morning with MademoiselleDelaunay?' he asked, lowering his voice a little; 'you are astranger?'

'Yes, an Englishman, ' David stammered, taken by surprise. Regnault's look swept over the youth's face, kindling in an instantwith the artist's delight in beautiful line and tint. 

'Are you going now?'

'Yes, ' said David hurriedly. 'It must be late?'

'Midnight, past. May I walk with you?'

David, overwhelmed, made some hurried excuses to his twocompanions, and found himself pushing his way to the door, anunnoticed figure in the tumult of Regnault's exit. 

When they got into the street outside, Regnault walked fastsouthwards for a minute or so without speaking. Then he stoppedabruptly, with the gesture of one shaking off a weight. 

'Pah! this Paris chokes me. '

Then, walking on again, he said, half-coherently, and to himself:

'So vile, --so small, --so foul! And there are such great things inthe world. _Beasts!--pigs!_--and yet so generous, so struggling, such a hard fight for it. So gifted, --many of them! What are youhere for?'

And he turned round suddenly upon his companion. David, touched andcaptured he knew not how by the largeness and spell of the man'spresence, conquered his shyness and explained himself asintelligibly as he could:

An English bookseller, making his way in trade, yet drawn to Franceby love for her literature and her past, and by a blood-tie whichseemed to have in it mystery and pain, for it could hardly bespoken of--the curious little story took the artist's fancy. Regnault did his best to draw out more of it, helped the youngfellow with his French, tried to get at his impressions, andclearly enjoyed the experience to which his seeking artist's sensehad led him. 

'What a night!' he said at last, drawing a full draught of the Mayinto his great chest. 'Stop and look down those streets in themoonlight. What surfaces, --what gradations, --what a beauty ofmultiplied lines, though it is only a piece of vulgar Haussmann!Indoors I can't breathe--but out of doors and at night this Parisof ours, --ah! she is still beautiful--_beautiful_! Now one hasshaken the dust of that place off, one can feel it. What did youthink of it?--tell me. '

He stooped and looked into his companion's face. David was tall andlithe, but Regnault was at least half a head taller and broader inproportion. 

David walked along for a minute without answering. He too, and evenmore keenly than Regnault, was conscious of escape and relief. Aforce which had, as it were, taken life and feeling by the throathad relaxed its grip. He disengaged himself with mingled loathingand joy. But in his shyness he did not know how to express himself, fearing, too, to wound the Frenchman. At last he said slowly:

'I never saw so many clever people together in my life. '

The words were bald, but Regnault perfectly understood what wasmeant by them, as well as by the troubled consciousness of theblack eyes raised to his. He laughed--shortly and bitterly. 

'No, we don't lack brains, we French. All the same I tell you, inthe whole of that room there are about half-a-dozen people, --oh, not so many!--not nearly so many!--who will ever make a mark, evenfor their own generation, who will ever strike anything out ofnature that is worth having--wrestle with her to any purpose. Why?Because they have every sort of capacity--every sort ofcleverness--and _no character_!'

David walked beside him in silence. He thought suddenly ofRegnault's own picture--its strange cruelty and force, itscraftsman's brilliance. And the recollection puzzled him. 

Regnault, however, had spoken with passion, and as though out ofthe fulness of some sore and long-familiar pondering. 

'You never saw anything like that in England, ' he resumed quickly. 

David hesitated. 

'No, I never did. But I am a provincial, and I have seen nothing atall. Perhaps in London--'

'No, you would see nothing like it in London, ' said Regnaultdecidedly. 'Bah! it is not that you are more virtuous than we are. Who believes such folly? But your vice is grosser, stupider. Luckyfor you! You don't sacrifice to it the best young brain of thenation, as we are perpetually doing. Ah, _mon Dieu_!' he brokeout in a kind of despair, 'this enigma of art!--of the artist! Oneflounders and blunders along. I have been floundering andblundering with the rest, --playing tricks--following this man andthat--till suddenly--a door opens--and one sees the real worldthrough for the first time!'

He stood still in his excitement, a smile of the most exquisitequality and sweetness dawning on his strong young face. 

'And then, ' he went on, beginning to walk again, and talking muchmore to the night than to his companion, 'one learns that the secretof life lies in _feeling_--in the heart, not in the head. Andno more limits than before!--all is still open, divinely open. Range the whole world--see everything, learn everything--till atthe end of years and years you may perhaps be found worthy to becalled an artist! But let art have her ends, all the while, shiningbeyond the means she is toiling through--her ends of beauty or ofpower. To spend herself on the mere photography of the vile and thehideous! what waste--what sacrilege!'

They had reached the Place de la Concorde, which lay bathed inmoonlight, the silver fountains plashing, the trees in theChamps-Elysees throwing their sharp yet delicate shadows on theintense whiteness of the ground, the buildings far away risingsoftly into the softest purest blue. Regnault stopped and lookedround him with enchantment. As for David, he had no eyes save forhis companion. His face was full of a quick responsive emotion. After an experience which had besmirched every ideal and bemockedevery faith, the young Frenchman's talk had carried the lad oncemore into the full tide of poetry and romance. 'The secret of lifelies in _feeling_, in the heart, not the head'--ah, _that_ heunderstood! He tried to express his assent, his homage to thespeaker; but neither he nor the artist understood very clearlywhat he was saying. Presently Regnault said in another tone:

'And they are such good fellows, many of them. Starving often--butnothing to propitiate the _bourgeois_, nothing to compromisethe "dignity of art. " A man will paint to please himself all day, paint, on a crust, something that won't and can't sell, that theworld in fact would be mad to buy; then in the evening he will puthis canvas to the wall, and paint sleeve-links or china to live. And so generous to each other: they will give each other all theyhave--food, clothes, money, knowledge. That man who gave thatabominable thing about St. Francis--I know him, he has a littleapartment near the Quai St. -Michel, and an invalid mother. He is aperfect angel to her. I could take off my hat to him whenever Ithink of it. '

His voice dropped again. Regnault was pacing along across thePlace, his arms behind him, David at his side. When he resumed, itwas once more in a tone of despondency. 

'There is an ideal; but so twisted, so corrupted! What is wantedis not less intelligence but _more_--more knowledge, moreexperience--something beyond this fevering, brutalising Paris, which is all these men know. They have got the poison of theBoulevards in their blood, and it dulls their eye and hand. Theywant scattering to the wilderness; they want the wave of life tocome and lift them past the mud they are dabbling in, with itshideous wrecks and _debris_, out and away to the great sea, tothe infinite beyond of experience and feeling! you, too, feel withme?--you, too, see it like that? Ah! when one has seen and feltItaly--the East, --the South--lived heart to heart with a wildnature, or with the great embodied thought of the past, --lived atlarge, among great things, great sights, great emotions, then therecomes purification! There is no other way out--no, none!'

So for another hour Regnault led the English boy up and down andalong the quays, talking in the frankest openest way to thisacquaintance of a night. It was as though he were wrestling his ownway through his own life-problem. Very often David could hardlyfollow. The joys, the passions, the temptations of the artist, struggling with the life of thought and aspiration, the craving toknow everything, to feel everything, at war with the hunger for amoral unity and a stainless self-respect--there was all this in histroubled, discursive talk, and there was besides the magic touch ofgenius, youth, and poetry. 

'Well, this is strange!' he said at last, stopping at a pointbetween the Louvre on the one hand and the Institute on the other, the moonlit river lying between. --' My friends come to me at Romeor at Tangiers, and they complain of me, "Regnault, you have grownmorose, no one can get a word out of you"--and they go awaywounded--I have seen it often. And it was always true. For months Ihave had no words. I have been in the dark, wrestling with my artand with this goading, torturing world, which the artist with hispuny forces has somehow to tame and render. Then--the otherday--ah! well, no matter!--but the dark broke, and there was light!and when I saw your face, your stranger's face, in that crowdto-night, listening to those things, it drew me. I wanted to say mysay. I don't make excuses. Very likely we shall never meetagain--but for this hour we have been friends. Good night!--goodnight! Look, --the dawn is coming!'

And he pointed to where, behind the towers of Notre-Dame, the firstwhiteness of the coming day was rising into the starry blue. 

They shook hands. 

'You go back to England soon?'

'In a--a--week or two. '

'Only believe this--we have things better worth seeing than "LesTrois Rats"--things that represent us better. That is what theforeigner is always doing; he spends his time in wondering at ourmonkey tricks; there is no nation can do them so well as we; andthe great France--the undying France!--disappears in a splutter of_blague_!'

He leant over the parapet, forgetting his companion, his eyes fixedon the great cathedral, on the slender shaft of the SainteChapelle, on the sky filling with light. 

Then suddenly he turned round, laid a quick hand on his companion'sshoulder. 

'If you ever feel inclined to write to me, the Ecole des Beaux-Artswill find me. Adieu. '

And drawing his coat round him in the chilliness of the dawn, hewalked off quickly across the bridge. 

David also hurried away, speeding along the deserted pavements tillagain he was in his own dark street. The dawn was growing from itsfirst moment of mysterious beauty into a grey disillusioning light. But he felt no reaction. He crept up the squalid stairs to hisroom. It was heavy with the scent of the narcissus. 

He took them, and stole along the passage to Elise's door. Therewere three steps outside it. He sat down on the lowest, putting hisflowers beside him. There was something awful to him even in thisnearness; he dare not have gone higher. 

He sat there for long--his heart beating, beating. Every part ofhis French experience so far, whether by sympathy or recoil, hadhelped to bring him to this intoxication of sense and soul. Regnault had spoken of the 'great things' of life. Had he too cometo understand them--thus?

At last he left his flowers there, kissing the step on which theywere laid, and which her foot must touch. He could hardly sleep;the slight fragrance which clung to the old bearskin in which hewrapt himself helped to keep him restless; it was the faintheliotrope scent he had noticed in her room. 

CHAPTER VI

'He loves me--he does really! Poor boy!'

The speaker was Elise Delaunay. She was sitting alone on the divanin her _atelier_, trying on a pair of old Pompadour shoes, with large faded rosettes and pink heels, which she had that momentrouted out of a broker's shop in the Rue de Seine, on her way backfrom the Luxembourg with David. They made her feet lookenchantingly small, and she was holding back her skirts that shemight get a good look at them. 

Her conviction of David's passion did not for some time lessen herinterest in the shoes, but at last she kicked them off, and flungherself back on the divan, to think out the situation a little. 

Yes, the English youth's adoration could no longer be ignored. Ithad become evident, even to her own acquaintances and comrades inthe various galleries she was now haunting in this bye-time of theartistic year. Whenever she and he appeared together now, therewere sly looks and smiles. 

The scandal of it did not affect her in the least. She belonged toBohemia, so apparently did he. She had been perfectly honest tillnow; but she had never let any convention stand in her way. All herconceptions of the relations between men and women were of anextremely free kind. Her mother's blood in her accounted both for acertain coldness and a certain personal refinement which bothdivided and protected her from a great many of her acquaintance, but through her father she had been acquainted for years with thetype of life and _menage_ which prevails among a certainsection of the French artist class, and if the occasion were butstrong enough she had no instincts inherited or acquired whichwould stand in the way of the gratification of passion. 

On the contrary, her reasoned opinions so far as she had anywere all in favour of _l'union libre_--that curious type ofassociation which held the artist Theodore Rousseau for life to thewoman who passed as his wife, and which obtains to a remarkableextent, with all those accompaniments of permanence, fidelity, andmutual service, which are commonly held to belong only to_l'union legale_, in one or two strata of French society. Shewas capable of sentiment; she had hidden veins of womanishweakness; but at the same time the little creature's prevailingtemper was one of remarkable coolness and audacity. She judged forherself; she had read for herself, observed for herself. Such atemper had hitherto preserved her from adventures; but, uponoccasion, it might as easily land her in one. She was at once adaughter of art and a daughter of the people, with a cross strainof gentle breeding and intellectual versatility thrown in, whichmade her more interesting and more individual than the rest of herclass. 

'We are a pair of Romantics out of date, you and I, ' she had saidonce to David, half mocking, half in earnest, and the phrase fittedthe relation and position of the pair very nearly. In spite of theenormous difference of their habits and training they had at bottomsimilar tastes--the same capacity for the excitements of art andimagination, the same shrinking from the coarse and ugly sides ofthe life amid which they moved, the same cravings for novelty andexperience. 

David went no more to the 'Trois Rats, ' and when, in obedience toLenain's recommendation, he had bought and begun to read a novel ofthe Goncourts, he threw it from him in a disgust beyond expression. _Her_ talk, meanwhile, was in some respects of the freest; shewould discuss subjects impossible to the English girl of the sameclass; she asked very few questions as to the people she mixedwith; and he was, by now, perfectly acquainted with her view, thaton the whole marriage was for the _bourgeois_, and had fewattractions for people who were capable of penetrating deeper intothe rich growths of life. But there was no _personal_ taint orlicense in what she said; and she herself could be always happilydivided from her topics. Their Bohemia was canopied with illusions, but the illusions on the whole were those of poetry. 

Were all David's illusions hers, however? _Love!_ She thoughtof it, half laughing, as she lay on the divan. She knew nothingabout it--she was for _art_. Yet what a brow, what eyes, whata gait--like a young Achilles!

She sprang up to look at a sketch of him, dashed off the daybefore, which was on the easel. Yes, it was like. There was thequick ardent air, the southern colour, the clustering black hair, the young parting of the lips. The invitation of the eyes wasirresistible--she smiled into them--the little pale face flushing. 

But at the same moment her attention was caught by a sketch pinnedagainst the wall just behind the easel. 

'Ah! my cousin, my good cousin!' she said, with a little mockingtwist of the mouth; 'how strange that you have not been here allthis time--never once! There was something said, I remember, abouta visit to Bordeaux about now. Ah! well--_tant mieux_--for youwould be rather jealous, my cousin!'

Then she sat down with her hands on her knees, very serious. Howlong since they met? A week. How long till the temporary closing ofthe Salon and the voting of the rewards? A fortnight. Well, shouldit go on till then? Yes or no? As soon as she knew her fate--or atany rate if she got her _mention_--she would go back to work. She had two subjects in her mind; she would work at home, andTaranne had promised to come and advise her. Then she would have notime for handsome English boys. But till then?

She took an anemone from a bunch David had brought her, and beganto pluck off the petals, alternating 'yes' and 'no. ' The last petalfell to 'yes. '

'I should have done just the same if it had been "no, "' she said, laughing. '_Allons_, he amuses me, and I do him no harm. WhenI go back to work he can do his business. He has done none yet. Hewill forget me and make some money. '

She paced up and down the studio thinking again. She was consciousof some remorse for her part in sending the Englishman's sister tothe Cervins. The matter had never been mentioned again between herand David; yet she knew instinctively that he was often ill atease. The girl was perpetually in Montjoie's studio, and surroundedin public places by a crew of his friends. Madame Cervin wasconstantly in attendance no doubt, but if it came to a struggle shewould have no power with the English girl, whose obstinacy was inproportion to her ignorance. 

Elise had herself once stopped Madame Cervin on the stairs, andsaid some frank things of the sculptor, in order to quiet anuncomfortable conscience. 

'Ah! you do not like Monsieur Montjoie?' said the other, lookinghard at her. 

Elise coloured, then she recovered herself. 

'All the world knows that Monsieur Montjoie has no scruples, madame, ' she cried angrily. 'You know it yourself. It is a shame. That girl understands nothing. '

Madame Cervin laughed. 

'Certainly she understands everything that she pleases, mademoiselle. But if there is any anxiety, let her brother come andlook after her. He can take her where she wants to go. I should beglad indeed. I am as tired as a dog. Since she came it is one_tapage_ from morning till night. '

And Elise retired, discomfited before those small malicious eyes. Since David's adoration for the girl artist in No. 27 had becomemore or less public property, Madame Cervin, who had seen from thebeginning that Louie was a burden on her brother, had decidedly thebest of the situation. 

'Has she lent Montjoie money?'

Elise meditated. The little _bourgeoise_ had a curiousweakness for posing as the patron of the various artists in thehouse. 'Very possible! and she looks on the Maenad as the only wayof getting it back? She would sell her soul for a napoleon--Ialways knew that. _Canaille_, all of them!'

And the meditation ended in the impatient conclusion that neithershe nor the brother had any responsibility. After all, any decentgirl, French or English, could soon see for herself what manner ofman was Jules Montjoie! And now for the 'private view' of a certainartistic club to which she had promised to take her Englishacquaintance. All the members of the club were young--of the newrebellious school of '_plein air_'--the afternoon promised tobe amusing. 

So the companionship of these two went on, and David passed fromone golden day to another. How she lectured him, the little, vain, imperious thing; and how meek he was with her, how different fromhis Manchester self! The woman's cleverness filled the field. Theman, wholly preoccupied with other things, did not care to producehimself, and in the first ardour of his new devotion kept all theself-assertive elements of his own nature in the background, caringfor nothing but to watch her eyes as she talked, to have her voicein his ears, to keep her happy and content in his company. 

Yet she was not taken in. With other people he must be proud, argumentative, self-willed--that she was sure of; but herconviction only made her realise her power over him with the morepleasure. His naive respect for her own fragmentary knowledge, hisunbounded admiration for her talent, his quick sympathy for all shedid and was, these things, little by little, tended to excite, topreoccupy her. 

Especially was she bent upon his artistic education. She carriedhim hither and thither, to the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Salon, insisting with a feverish eloquence and invention that he shouldworship all that she worshipped--no matter if he did notunderstand!--let him worship all the same--till he had learnt hisnew alphabet with a smiling docility, and caught her very tricks ofphrase. Especially were they haunters of the sculptures in theLouvre, where, because of the difficulty of it, she piqued herselfmost especially on knowledge, and could convict him mosttriumphantly of a barbarian ignorance. Up and down they wandered, and she gave him eyes, whether for Artemis, or Aphrodite, orApollo, or still more for the significant and troubling art of theRenaissance, French and Italian. She would flit before him, perching here and there like a bird, and quivering through andthrough with a voluble enjoyment. 

Then from these lingerings amid a world charged at every point withthe elements of passion and feeling, they would turn into the openair, into the May sunshine, which seemed to David's northern eyesso lavish and inexhaustible, carrying with it inevitably thekindness of the gods! They would sit out of doors either in thegreenwood paths of the Bois, where he could lie at her feet, andsee nothing but her face and the thick young wood all round them, or in some corner of the Champs-Elysees, or the sun-beaten Quai dela Conference, where the hurrying life of the town brushed pastthem incessantly, yet without disturbing for a moment theirabsorption in or entertainment of each other. 

Yet all through she maintained her mastery of the situation. Shewas a riddle to him often, poor boy! One moment she would lendherself in bewildering unexpected ways to his passion, the next shewould allow him hardly the privileges of the barest acquaintance, hardly the carrying of her cloak, the touch of her hand. But shehad no qualms. It was but to last another fortnight; the friendshipsoothed and beguiled for her these days of excited waiting; and awoman, when she is an artist and a Romantic, may at least sit, smoke, and chat with whomsoever she likes, provided it be a time ofholiday, and she is not betraying her art. 

Meanwhile the real vulgarity of her nature--its insatiable vanity, its reckless ambition--was masked from David mainly by the veryjealousy and terror which her artist's life soon produced in him. He saw no sign of other lovers; she had many acquaintances but nointimates; and the sketch in her room had been carelessly explainedto him as the portrait of her cousin. But the _atelier_, andthe rivalries it represented:--after three days with her he hadlearnt that what had seemed to him the extravagance, the pose ofher first talk with him, was in truth the earnest, the reality ofher existence. She told him that since she was a tiny child she haddreamed of _fame_--dreamed of people turning in the streetswhen she passed--of a glory that should lift her above all thecommonplaces of existence, and all the disadvantages of her ownstart in life. 

'I am neither beautiful, nor rich, nor well-born; but if I havetalent, what matter? Everyone will be at my feet. And if I have notalent--_grand Dieu!_--what is there left for me but to killmyself?'

And she would clasp her hands round her knees, and look at him withfierce, drawn brows, as though defying him to say a single syllablein favour of any meaner compromise with fate. 

This fever of the artist and the _concurrent_--in a womanabove all--how it bewildered him! He soon understood enough of it, however, to be desperately jealous of it, to realise something ofthe preliminary bar it placed between any lover and the girl'sheart and life. 

Above all was he jealous of her teachers. Taranne clearly couldbeat her down with a word, reduce her to tears with an unfavourablecriticism; then he had but to hold up a finger, to say, 'Mademoiselle, you have worked well this week, your drawing showsimprovement, I have hopes of you, ' to bring her to his feet withdelight and gratitude. It was a _monstrous_ power, this powerof the master with his pupil! How could women submit to it?

Yet his lover's instincts led him safely through many perils. Hewas infinitely complaisant towards all her artistic talk, all hergossip of the _atelier_. It seemed to him--but then hisapprehension of this strange new world was naturally a somewhatconfused one--that Elise was not normally on terms with any of herfellow students. 

'If I don't get my _mention_, ' she would say passionately, 'Itell you again it will be intrigue; it will be those creatures inthe _atelier_ who want to get rid of me--to finish with me. Ah! I will _crush_ them all yet. And I have been good to themall--every one--I vow I have--even to that animal of a Breal, whois always robbing me of my place at the _concours_, and takingmean advantages. _Miserabies!_'

And the tears would stand in her angry eyes; her whole delicateframe would throb with fierce feeling. 

Gradually he learnt how to deal with these fits, even when theychilled him with a dread, a conviction he dared not analyse. Hewould so soothe and listen to her, so ply her with the praises ofher gift, which came floated to him on the talk of thoseacquaintances of hers to whom she had introduced him, that her mostdeep-rooted irritations would give way for a time. The woman wouldreappear; she would yield to the charm of his admiring eyes, hisstammered flatteries; her whole mood would break up, dissolve intoeager softness, and she would fall into a childish plaintiveness, saying wild generous things even of her rivals, now there seemed tobe no one under heaven to take their part, and at last, even, letting her little hand fall into those eager brown ones which layin wait for it, letting it linger there--forgotten. 

Especially was she touched in his favour by the way in whichRegnault had singled him out. After he had given her the history ofthat midnight walk, he saw clearly that he had risen to a higherplane in her esteem. She had no heroes exactly; but she had certainartistic passions, certain romantic fancies, which seemed to touchdeep fibres in her. Her admiration for Regnault was one of these;but David soon understood that he had no cause whatever to bejealous of it. It was a matter purely of the mind and theimagination. 

So the days passed--the hot lengthening days. Sometimes in the longafternoons they pushed far afield into the neighbourhood of Paris. The green wooded hills of Sevres and St. Cloud, the blue curves andreaches of the Seine, the flashing lights and figures, thepleasures of companionship, self-revelation, independence--the daywas soon lost in these quick impressions, and at night they wouldcome back in a fragrant moonlight, descending from their train intothe noise and glitter of the streets, only to draw closertogether--for surely on these crowded pavements David might claimher little arm in his for safety's sake--till at last they stood inthe dark passage between his door and hers, and she would suddenlypelt him with a flower, spring up her small stairway, and lock herdoor behind her, before, in his emotion, he could find his voice ora farewell. Then he would make his way into his own den, and sitthere in the dark, lost in a thronging host of thoughts andmemories, --feeling life one vibrating delight. 

At last one morning he awoke to the fact that only four days moreremained before the date on which, according to their originalplan, they were to go back to Manchester. He laughed aloud when therecollection first crossed his mind; then, having a moment tohimself, he sat down and scrawled a few hasty words to John. Business detained him yet a while--would detain him a fewweeks--let John manage as he pleased, his employer trustedeverything to him--and money was enclosed. Then he wrote anotherhurried note to the bank where he had placed his six hundredpounds. Let them send him twenty pounds at once, in Bank of Englandnotes. He felt himself a young king as he gave the order--king ofthis mean world and of its dross. All his business projects hadvanished from his mind. He could barely have recalled them if hehad tried. During the first days of his acquaintance with Elise hehad spent a few spare hours in turning over the boxes on the quays, in talks with booksellers in the Rue de Seine or the Rue de Lille, in preliminary inquiries respecting some commissions he hadundertaken. But now, every hour, every thought were hers. What didmoney matter, in the name of Heaven? Yet when his twenty poundscame, he changed his notes and pocketed his napoleons with a vastsatisfaction. For they meant power, they meant opportunity; everyone should be paid away against so many hours by her side, at herfeet. 

Meanwhile day after day he had reminded himself of Louie, and dayafter day he had forgotten her again, absolutely, altogether. Onceor twice he met her on the stairs, started, remembered, and triedto question her as to what she was doing. But she was still angrywith him for his interference on the day of the pose; and he couldget very little out of her. Let him only leave her alone; she wasnot a school-child to be meddled with; that he would find out. Asto Madame Cervin, she was a little fool, and her meanness in moneymatters was disgraceful; but she, Louie, could put up with her. Oneof these meetings took place on the day of his letters to the bankand to John. Louie asked him abruptly when he thought of returning. He flushed deeply, stammered, said he was inclined to stay longer, but of course she could be sent home. An escort could be found forher. She stared at him; then suddenly her black eyes sparkled, andshe laughed so that the sound echoed up the dark stairs. Davidhotly inquired what she meant; but she ran up still laughingloudly, and he was left to digest her scornful amusement as best hecould. 

Not long after he found the Cervins' door open as he passed, and inthe passage saw a group of people, mostly men; Montjoie in front, just lighting a cigar; Louie's black hat in the background. Davidhurried past; he loathed the sculptor's battered look, his insolenteye, his slow ambiguous manner; he still burnt with the anger andhumiliation of his ineffectual descent on the man's domain. ButMadame Cervin, catching sight of him from the back of the party, pursued him panting and breathless to his own door. Would monsieurplease attend to her; he was so hard to get hold of; never, infact, at home! Would he settle her little bill, and give hermore money for current expenses? Mademoiselle Louie required tobe kept amused--_mon Dieu!_--from morning to night! She had noobjection, provided it were made worth her while. And how muchlonger did monsieur think of remaining in Paris?

David answered recklessly that he did not know, paid her bill forLouie's board and extras without looking at it, and gave her anapoleon in hand, wherewith she departed, her covetous eyes aglow, her mouth full of excited civilities. 

She even hesitated a moment at the door and then came back toassure him that she was really all discretion with regard to hissister; no doubt monsieur had heard some unpleasant stories, forinstance, of M. Montjoie; she could understand perfectly, thatcoming from such a quarter, they had affected monsieur's mind; buthe would see that she could not make a sudden quarrel with one ofher husband's old friends; Mademoiselle Louie (who was already her_cherie_) had taken a fancy to pose for this statue; it wassurely better to indulge her than to rouse her self-will, but shecould assure monsieur that she had looked after her as though ithad been her own daughter. 

David stood impatiently listening. In a few minutes he was to bewith Elise at the corner of the Rue Lafitte. Of course it was allright!--and if it were not, he could not mend it. The woman wasvulgar and grasping, but what reason was there to think anythingelse that was evil of her? Probably she had put up with Louie moreeasily than a woman of a higher type would have done. At any rateshe was doing her best, and what more could be asked of him than hehad done? Louie behaved outrageously in Manchester; he could nothelp it, either there or here. He had interfered again and again, and had always been a fool for his pains. Let her choose forherself. A number of old and long-hidden exasperations seemed nowto emerge whenever he thought of his sister. 

Five minutes later he was in the Rue Lafitte. 

It was Elise's caprice that they should always meet in this way, out of doors; at the corner of their own street; on the steps ofthe Madeleine; beneath the Vendome Column; in front of a particularbonbon shop; or beside the third tree from the Place de la Concordein the northern alley of the Tuileries Gardens. He had been onlyonce inside her studio since the first evening of theiracquaintance. 

His mind was full of excitement, for the Salon had been closedsince the day before; and the awards of the jury would beinformally known, at least in some cases, by the evening. Elise'sexcitement since the critical hours began had been pitiful to see. As he stood waiting he gave his whole heart to her and herambitions, flinging away from him with a passionate impatienceevery other interest, every other thought. 

When she came she looked tired and white. 'I can't go to galleries, and I can't paint, ' she said, shortly. 'What shall we do?'

Her little black hat was drawn forward, but through the dainty veilhe could see the red spot on either cheek. Her hands were pusheddeep into the pockets of her light grey jacket, recalling theenergetic attitude in which she had stood over Louie on theoccasion of their first meeting. He guessed at once that she hadnot slept, and that she was beside herself with anxiety. How tomanage her?--how to console her? He felt himself so young and raw;yet already his passion had awakened in him a hundred new anddelicate perceptions. 

'Look at the weather!' he said to her. 'Come out of town! let usmake for the Gare St. Lazare, and spend the day at St. Germain. '

She hesitated. 

'Taranne will write to me directly he knows--directly! He mightwrite any time this evening. No, no!--I can't go! I must be on thespot. '

'He can't write _before_ the evening. You said yourself beforeseven nothing could be known. We will get back in ample time, Iswear. '

They were standing in the shade of a shop awning, and he waslooking down at her, eagerly, persuasively. She had a debate withherself, then with a despairing gesture of the hands, she turnedabruptly--

'Well then--to the station!'

When they had started, she lay back in the empty carriage he hadfound for her, and shut her eyes. The air was oppressive, for theday before had been showery, and the heat this morning was a dampheat which relaxed the whole being. But before the train moved, shefelt a current of coolness, and hastily looking up she saw thatDavid had possessed himself of the cheap fan which had been lyingon her lap, and was fanning her with his gaze fixed upon her, agaze which haunted her as her eyelids fell again. 

Suddenly she fell into an inward perplexity, an inward impatienceon the subject of her companion, and her relation to him. It hadbeen all very well till yesterday! But now the artistic andprofessional situation had become so strained, so intense, shecould hardly give him a thought. His presence there, and its tacitdemands upon her, tried her nerves. Her mind was full of a hundred_miseres d'atelier_, of imaginary enemies and intrigues; oneminute she was all hope, the next all fear; and she turned sickwhen she thought of Taranne's letter. 

What had she been entangling herself for? she whose whole life andsoul belonged to art and ambition! This comradeship, begun as acaprice, an adventure, was becoming too serious. It must end!--endprobably to-day, as she had all along determined. Then, as sheframed the thought, she became conscious of a shrinking, adifficulty, which enraged and frightened her. 

She sat up abruptly and threw back her veil. 

David made a little exclamation as he dropped the fan. 

'Yes!' she said, looking at him with a little frown, 'yes--what didyou say?'

Then she saw that his whole face was working with emotion. 

'I wish you would have stayed like that, ' he said, in a voice whichtrembled. 

'Why?'

'Because--because it was so sweet!'

She gave a little start, and a sudden red sprang into her cheek. 

His heart leapt. He had never seen her blush for any word of hisbefore. 

'I prefer the air itself, ' she said, bending forward and lookingaway from him out of the open window at the villas they werepassing. 

Yet, all the while, as the country houses succeeded each other andher eyes followed them, she saw not their fragrant, flowerygardens, but the dark face and tall young form opposite. He washandsomer even than when she had seen him first--handsomer far thanher portrait of him. Was it the daily commerce with new forms ofart and intelligence which Paris and her companionship had broughthim?--or simply the added care which a man in love instinctivelytakes of the little details of his dress and social conduct?--whichhad given him this look of greater maturity, greater distinction?Her heart fluttered a little--then she fell back on the thought ofTaranne's letter. 

They emerged from the station at St. Germain into a fierce blaze ofsun, which burned on the square red mass of the old chateau, andthrew a blinding glare on the white roads. 

'Quick! for the trees!' she said, and they both hurried over theopen space which lay between them and the superb chestnut grovewhich borders the famous terrace. Once there all was well, and theycould wander from alley to alley in a green shade, the whiteblossom-spikes shining in the sun overhead, and to their right theblue and purple plain, with the Seine winding and dimpling, theriver polders with their cattle, and far away the dim heights ofMontmartre just emerging behind the great mass of Mont Valerien, which blocked the way to Paris. Such lights and shades, such springleaves, such dancing airs!

Elise drew a long breath, slipped off her jacket which he made ajoy of carrying, and loosened the black lace at her throat whichfell so prettily over the little pink cotton underneath. 

Then she looked at her companion unsteadily. There was excitementin this light wind, this summer sun. Her great resolve to 'end it'began to look less clear to her. Nay, she stood still and smiled upinto his face, a very siren of provocation and wild charm--the windblowing a loose lock about her eyes. 

'Is this better than England--than your Manchester?' she asked himscornfully, and he--traitor!--flinging out of his mind all thebounties of an English May, all his memories of the whitethorn andwaving fern and foaming streams set in the deep purple breast ofthe Scout--vowed to her that nowhere else could there be spring orbeauty or sunshine, but only here in France and at St. Germain. 

At this she smiled and blushed--no woman could have helped theblush. In truth, his will, steadily bent on one end, while hers wasdistracted by half a dozen different impulses, was beginning toaffect her in a troubling, paralysing way. For all her parade of amature and cynical enlightenment, she was just twenty; it was sucha May day as never was; and when once she had let herself relaxtowards him again, the inward ache of jealous ambition made thispassionate worship beside her, irrelevant as it was, all the moresoothing, all the more luring. 

Still she felt that something must be done to stem the tide, andagain she fell back upon luncheon. They had bought some provisionson their way to the station in Paris. He might subsist on sceneryand aesthetics if he pleased--as for her, she was a common personwith common needs, and must eat. 

'Oh, not here!' he cried, 'why, this is all in public. Look at thenursemaids, and the boys playing, and the carriages on the terrace. Come on a little farther. You remember that open place with thethorns and the stream?--there we should be in peace. '

She did not know that she wanted to be in peace; but she gave way. 

So they wandered on past the chestnuts into the tangled depths ofthe old forest. A path sunk in brambles and fern took them throughbeech wood to the little clearing David had in his mind. A tinystream much choked by grass and last year's leaves ran along oneside of it. A fallen log made a seat, and the beech trees spreadtheir new green fans overhead, or flung them out to right and leftaround the little space, and for some distance in front, till thegreen sprays and the straight grey stems were lost on all sides ina brownish pinkish mist which betrayed a girdle of oaks not yetconquered by the summer. 

She took her seat on the log, and he flung himself beside her. Outcame the stores in his pockets, and once more they made themselveschildishly merry over a scanty meal, which left them still hungry. 

Then for an hour or two they sat lounging and chattering in thewarm shade, while the gentle wind brought them every spring scent, every twitter of the birds, every swaying murmur of the forest. David lay on his back against the log, his eyes now plunging intothe forest, now watching the curls of smoke from his pipe mountingagainst the background of green, or the moist fleecy clouds whichseemed to be actually tangled in the tree-tops, now fixed as longas they dared on his companion's face. She was not beautiful? Lether say it! For she had the softest mouth which drooped like achild with a grievance when she was silent, and melted into thesubtlest curves when she talked. She had, as a rule, no colour, buther clear paleness, as contrasted with the waves of her light-goldhair, seemed to him an exquisite beauty. The eyebrows had anoriental trick of mounting at the corners, but the effect, takenwith the droop of the mouth, was to give the face in repose acertain charming look of delicate and plaintive surprise. Above allit was her smallness which entranced him; her feet and hands, hertiny waist, the _finesse_ of her dress and movements. All thewomen he had ever seen, Lucy and Dora among them, served at thismoment only to make a foil in his mind for this little Parisianbeside him. 

How she talked this afternoon! In her quick reaction towards himshe was after all more the woman than she had ever been. Shechattered of her forlorn childhood, of her mother's woes and herfather's iniquities, using the frankest language about these last;then of herself and her troubles. He listened and laughed; his lookas she poured herself out to him was in itself a caress. Moreover, unconsciously to both, their relation had changed somewhat. Theedge of his first ignorance and shyness had rubbed off. He was nolonger a mere slave at her feet. Rather a new and sweet equalityseemed at last after all these days to have arisen between them; abond more simple, more natural. Every now and then he caught hisbreath under the sense of a coming crisis; meanwhile the May daywas a dream of joy, and life an intoxication. 

But he controlled himself long, being indeed in desperate fear ofbreaking the spell which held her to him this heavenly afternoon. The hours slipped by; the air grew stiller and sultrier. Presently, just as the sun was sinking into the western wood, a woman, carrying a bundle and with a couple of children, crossed the glade. One child was on her arm; the other, whimpering with heat andfatigue, dragged wearily behind her, a dead weight on its mother'sskirts. The woman looked worn out, and was scolding the cryingchild in a thin exasperated voice. When she came to the stream, sheput down her bundle, and finding a seat by the water, she threwback her cotton bonnet and began to wipe her brow, with longbreaths which were very near to groans. Then the child on her lapset up a shout of hunger, while the child behind her began to crylouder than before. The woman hastily raised the baby, unfastenedher dress, and gave it the breast, so stifling its cries; then, first slapping the other child with angry vehemence, she groped inthe bundle for a piece of sausage roll, and by dint of alternatelyshaking the culprit and stuffing the food into its poor open mouth, succeeded in reducing it to a chewing and sobbing silence. Themother herself was clearly at the last gasp, and when at length thechildren were quiet, as she turned her harshly outlined head so asto see who the other occupants of the glade might be, her look hadin it the dull hostility of the hunted creature whose powers ofself-defence are almost gone. 

But she could not rest long. After ten minutes, at longest, shedragged herself up from the grass with another groan, and they alldisappeared into the trees, one of the children crying again--apitiable trio. 

Elise had watched the group closely, and the sight seemed in someunexplained way to chill and irritate the girl. 

'There is one of the drudges that men make, ' she said bitterly, looking after the woman. 

'Men?' he demurred; 'I suspect the husband is a drudge too. '

'Not he!' she cried. 'At least he has liberty, choice, comrades. Heis not battered out of all pleasure, all individuality, that otherhuman beings may have their way and be cooked for, and thiswretched human race may last. The woman is always the victim, saywhat you like. But for _some_ of us at least there is a wayout!'

She looked at him defiantly. 

A tremor swept through him under the suddenness of this jarringnote. Then a delicious boldness did away with the tremor. He mether eyes straight. 

'Yes--_love_ can always find it, ' he said under hisbreath--'or make it. '

She wavered an instant, then she made a rally. 

'I know nothing about that, ' she said scornfully; 'I was thinking ofart. _Art_ breaks all chains, or accepts none. The woman thathas art is free, and she alone; for she has scaled the men's heavenand stolen their sacred fire. '

She clasped he hands tightly on her knee; her face was full ofaggression. 

David sat looking at her, trying to smile, but his heart sankwithin him. 

He threw away his pipe, and laid his hand down against the log, notfar from her, trying to smile, but his heart sank within him. 

He threw away his pipe and laid his head down against the log, notfar from her, drawing his hat over his eyes. So they sat in silencea little while, till he looked up and said, in a bright beseechingtone:

'Finish me that scene in _Hernani!_'

The day before, after a _matinee_ of _Andromaque_ at theTheatre-Francais, in a moment of rebellion and reaction againstall things classical, they had both thrown themselves upon_Hernani_. She had read it aloud to him in a green corner ofthe Bois, having a faculty that way, and bidding him take it as aFrench lesson. He took it, of course, as a lesson in nothing butthe art of making wild speeches to the woman one loves. 

But now she demurred. 

'It is not here. '

He produced it out of his pocket. 

She shrugged her shoulders. 

'I am not in the vein. '

'You said last week you were not in the vein, ' he said, laughingtremulously, 'and you read me that scene from _Ruy Blas_, sothat when we went to see Sarah Bernhardt in the evening I wasdisappointed!'

She smiled, not being able to help it, for all flattery was sweetto her. 

'We must catch our train. I would never speak to you again if wewere late!'

He held up his watch to her. 

'An hour--it is, at the most, half an hour's walk. '

'Ah, _mon Dieu!_' she cried, clasping her hands. 'It is allover, the vote is given. Perhaps Taranne is writing to me now, atthis moment!'

'Read--read! and forget it half an hour more. '

She caught up the book in a frenzy, and began to read, firstcarelessly and with unintelligible haste; but before a page wasover, the artist had recaptured her, she had slackened, she hadbegun to interpret. 

It was the scene in the third act where Hernani the outlaw, who hashimself bidden his love, Dona Sol, marry her kinsman the old Duke, rather than link her fortunes to those of a ruined chief ofbanditti, comes in upon the marriage he has sanctioned, naycommanded. The bridegroom's wedding gifts are there on the table. He and Dona Sol are alone. 

The scene begins with a speech of bitter irony from Hernani. Hisfriends have been defeated and dispersed. He is alone in the world;a price is on his head; his lot is more black and hopeless thanbefore. Yet his heart is bursting within him. He had bidden her, indeed, but how could she have obeyed! Traitress! false love! falseheart!

He takes up the jewels one by one. 

'_This necklace is brave work, --and the bracelet is rare--thoughnot so rare as the woman who beneath a brow so pure can bear aboutwith her a heart so vile! And what in exchange? A little love?Bah!--a mere trifle!... Great God! that one can betray likethis--and feel no shame--and live!_'

For answer, Dona Sol goes proudly up to the wedding casket and, with a gesture matching his own, takes out the dagger from itslowest depth. 'You stop halfway!' she says to him calmly, and heunderstands. In an instant he is at her feet, tortured with remorseand passion, and the magical love scene of the act develops. Whatingenuity of tenderness, yet what truth!

'She has pardoned me, and loves me! Ah, who will make it possiblethat I too, after such words, should love Hernani and forgive him?Tears!--thou weepest, and again it is my fault! And who will punishme? for thou wilt but forgive again! Ah, my friends are dead!--andit is a madman speaks to thee. Forgive! I would fain love--I knownot how. And yet, what deeper love could there be than this? Oh!Weep not, but die with me! If I had but a world, and could give itto thee!'

The voice of the reader quivered. A hand came upon the book andcaught her hand. She looked up and found herself face to face withDavid, kneeling beside her. They stared at each other. Then hesaid, half choked:

'I can't bear it any more! I love you with all my heart--oh, youknow--you know I do!'

She was stupefied for a moment, and then with a sudden gesture shedrew herself away, and pushed him from her. 

'Leave me alone--leave me free--this moment!' she saidpassionately. 

'Why do you persecute and pursue me? What right have you? I havebeen kind to you, and you lay shares for me. I will have nothingmore to do with you. Let me go home, and let us part. '

She got up, and with feverish haste tied her veil over her hat. Hehad fallen with his arms across the log, and his face hidden uponthem. She paused irresolutely. 'Monsieur David!'

He made no answer. 

She bent down and touched him. 

He shook his head. 

'No, no!--go!' he said thickly. She bit her lip. The breath underher little lace tippet rose and fell with furious haste. Then shesat down beside him, and with her hands clasped on her knee beganto please with him in tremulous light tones, as though they were apair of children. Why was he so foolish? Why had he tried to spoiltheir beautiful afternoon? She must go. The train would not waitfor them. But he must come too. He must. After a little he rosewithout a word, gathered up the book and her wrap, and off they setalong the forest path. 

She stole a glance at him. It seemed to her that he walked as if hedid not know where he was or who was beside him. Her heart smoteher. When they were deep in a hazel thicket, she stole out a smallimpulsive hand, and slipped it into his, which hung beside him. Hestarted. Presently she felt a slight pressure, but it relaxedinstantly, and she took back her hand, feeling ashamed of herself, and aggrieved besides. She shot on in front of him and he followed. 

So they walked through the chestnuts and across the white road tothe station in the red glow of the evening sun. He followed herinto the railway carriage, did her every little service withperfect gentleness; then when they started he took the oppositecorner, and turning away from her, stared, with eyes that evidentlysaw nothing, at the villas beside the line, at the children in thestreets, at the boats on the dazzling river. 

She in her corner tried to be angry, to harden her heart, topossess herself only with the thought of Taranne's letter. But theevening was not as the morning. That dark teasing figure at theother end, outlined against the light of the window, intruded, tookup a share in her reverie she resented but could not prevent nay, presently absorbed it altogether. Absurd! she had had love made toher before, and had known how to deal with it. The artist must havecomrades, and the comrades may play false; well, then the artistmust take care of herself. 

She had done no harm; she was not to blame; she had let him knowfrom the beginning that she only lived for art. What folly, andwhat treacherous, inconsiderate folly, it had all been!

So she lashed herself up. But her look stole incessantly to thatopposite corner, and every now and then she felt her lips tremblingand her eyes growing hot in a way which annoyed her. 

When they reached Paris she said to him imperiously as he helpedher out of the carriage, 'A cab, please!'

He found one for her, and would have closed the door upon her. 

'No, come in!' she said to him with the same accent. 

His look in return was like a blow to her, there was such aninarticulate misery in it. But he got in, and they drove on insilence. 

When they reached the Rue Chantal she sprang out, snatched her keyfrom the concierge, and ran up the stairs. But when she reached thepoint on that top passage where their ways diverged, she stoppedand looked back for him. 

'Come and see my letter, ' she said to him, hesitating. 

He stood quite still, his arms hanging beside him, and drew a longbreath that stabbed her. 

'I think not. '

And he turned away to his own door. 

But she ran back to him and laid her hand on his arm. Her eyes werefull of tears. 

'Please, Monsieur David. We were good friends this morning. Be nowand always my good friend!'

He shook his head again, but he let himself be led by her. Stillholding him--torn between her quick remorse and her eagerness forTaranne's letter, she unlocked her door. One dart for the table. Yes! there it lay. She took it up; then her face blanched suddenly, and she came piteously up to David, who was standing just insidethe closed door. 

'Wish me luck, Monsieur David, wish me luck, as you did before!'

But he was silent, and she tore open the letter. '_Dieu!--monDieu!_'

It was a sound of ecstasy. Then she flung down the letter, andrunning up to David, she caught his arm again with both hands. 

'_Triomphe! Triomphe!_ I have got my _mention_, and thepicture they skied is to be brought down to the line, and Tarannesays I have done better than any other pupil of his of the samestanding--that I have an extraordinary gift--that I must succeed, all the world says so--and two other members of the jury send metheir compliments. Ah! Monsieur David'--in a tone of reproach--'bekind--be nice--congratulate me. '

And she drew back an arm's-length that she might look at him, herown face overflowing with exultant colour and life. Then sheapproached again, her mood changing. 

'It is too _detestable_ of you to stand there like a statue!ah! that it is! For I never deceived you, no, never. I said toyou the first night--there is nothing else for me in the worldbut art--nothing! Do you hear? This falling in love spoilseverything--_everything!_ Be friends with me. You will begoing back to England soon. Perhaps--perhaps'--her voicefaltered--'I will take a week's more holiday--Taranne says I ought. But then I must go to work--and we will part friends--alwaysfriends--and respect and understand each other all our lives, _n'est-ce pas!_'

'Oh! let me go!' cried David fiercely, his loud strained voicestartling them both, and flinging her hand away from him, he madefor the door. But impulsively she threw herself against it, dismayed to find herself so near crying, and shaken with emotionfrom head to foot. 

They stood absorbed in each other; she with her hands behind her onthe door, and her hat tumbling back from her masses of loosenedhair. And as she gazed she was fascinated; for there was a grandlook about him in his misery--a look which was strange to her, andwhich was in fact the emergence of his rugged and Puritan race. Butwhatever it was it seized her, as all aspects of his personalbeauty had done from the beginning. She held out her little whitehands to him appealing. 

'No! no!' he said roughly, trying to put her away, '_never--never_--friends! You may kill me--you shan't make achild of me any more. Oh! my God!' It was a cry of agony. 'A mancan't go about with a girl in this way, if--if she is like you, andnot--' His voice broke--he lost the thread of what he was saying, and drew his hand across his eyes before he broke out again. 'What--you thought I was just a raw cub, to be played with. Oh, Iam too dull, I suppose, to understand! But I have grown under yourhands anyway. I don't know myself--I should do you or myself amischief if this went on, Let me go--and go home to-night!'

And again he made a threatening step forward. But when he cameclose to her he broke down. 

'I would have worked for you so, ' he said thickly. 'For your sake Iwould have given up my country. I would have made myself Frenchaltogether. It should have been marriage or no marriage as youpleased. You should have been free to go or stay. Only I would havelaid myself down for you to walk over. I have some money. I wouldhave settled here. I would have protected you. It is not right fora woman to be alone--anyone so young and so pretty. I thought youunderstood--that you must understand--that your heart was meltingto me. I should have done your work no harm--I should have beenyour slave--you know that. That _cursed, cursed_ art!'

He spoke with a low intense emphasis; then turning away he buriedhis face in his hands. 

'David!'

He looked up startled. She was stepping towards him, a smile ofineffable charm floating as it were upon her tears. 

'I don't know what is the matter with me!' she said tremulously. 'There is trouble in it, I know. ' It is the broken glass comingtrue. _Mais, Voyons! c'est plus fort que moi!_ Do you care somuch--would it break your heart--would you let me work--and never, _never_ get in the way? Would you be content that art shouldcome first and you second? I can promise you no more than that--notone little inch! _Would_ you be content? Say!'

He ran to her with a cry. She let him put his arms round her, and ashiver of excitement ran through her. 

'What does it mean?' she said breathlessly. 'One is so strong onemoment--and the next--like this! Oh, why did you ever come?'

Then she burst into tears, hiding her eyes upon his breast. 

'Oh! I have been so much alone! but I have got a heart somewhereall the same. If you will have it, you must take the consequences. '

Awed by the mingling of his silence with that painful throbbingbeneath her cheek, she looked up. He stooped--and their young facesmet. 

CHAPTER VII

During the three weeks which had ended for David and Elise in thisscene of passion, Louie had been deliberately going her own way, managing even in this unfamiliar _milieu_ to extract from italmost all the excitement or amusement it was capable of yieldingher. All the morning she dragged Madame Cervin about the Parisstreets: in the afternoon she would sometimes pose for Montjoie, and sometimes not; he had to bring her bonbons and theatre ticketsto bribe her, and learn new English wherewith to flatter her. Thenin the evenings she made the Cervins take her to theatres andvarious entertainments more or less reputable, for which of courseDavid paid. It seemed to Madame Cervin, as she sat staring besidethem, that her laughs never fell in with the laughs of otherpeople. But whether she understood or no, it amused her, and go shewould. 

A looker-on might have found the relations between Madame Cervinand her boarder puzzling at first sight. In reality theyrepresented a compromise between considerations of finance andconsiderations of morals--as the wife of the _ancien prix deRome_ understood these last. For the ex-modiste was by no meanswithout her virtues or her scruples. She had ugly manners and ideason many points, but she had lived a decent life at any rate sinceher marriage with a man for whom she had an incomprehensibleaffection, heavily as he burdened and exploited her; and though shetook all company pretty much as it came, she had a much keenersense now than in her youth of the practical advantages of goodbehaviour to a woman, and of the general reasonableness of the_bourgeois_ point of view with regard to marriage and thefamily. Her youth had been stormy; her middle age tended to acertain conservative philosophy of common sense, and to thedevelopment of a rough and ready conscience. 

Especially was she conscious of the difficulties of virtue. WhenElise Delaunay, for instance, was being scandalously handled by thetalkers in her stuffy _salon_, Madame Cervin sat silent. Notonly had she her own reasons for being grateful to the littleartist, but with the memory of her own long-past adventures behindher she was capable by now of a secret admiration for anunprotected and struggling girl who had hitherto held her headhigh, worked hard, and avoided lovers. 

So that when the artist's wife undertook the charge of thegood-looking English girl she had done it honestly, up to herlights, and she had fulfilled it honestly. She had in fact hardlylet Louie Grieve out of her sight since her boarder was handed overto her. 

These facts, however, represent only one side of the situation. Madame Cervin was now respectable. She had relinquished yearsbefore the _chasse_ for personal excitement; she had replacedit by 'the _chasse_ of the five-franc piece. ' She loved hermoney passionately; but at the same time she loved power, gossip, and small flatteries. They distracted her, these last, from thedepressing spectacle of her husband's gradual and inevitable decay. So that her life represented a balance between these variousinstincts. For some time past she had gathered about her a train ofsmall artists, whom she mothered and patronised, and whose wildtalk and pecuniary straits diversified the monotony of her ownchildless middle age. Montjoie, whose undoubted talent imposed upona woman governed during all her later life by the traditions andthe admirations of the artist world, had some time beforeestablished a hold upon her, partly dependent on a certainmagnetism in the man, partly, as Elise had suspected, upon moneyrelations. For the grasping little _bourgeoise_ who wouldhaggle for a morning over half a franc, and keep a lynx-eyed watchover the woman who came to do the weekly cleaning, lest themiserable creature should appropriate a crust or a cold potato, hada weak side for her artist friends who flattered and amused her. She would lend to them now and then out of her hoards; she had lentto Montjoie in the winter when, after months of wild dissipation, he was in dire straits and almost starving. 

But having lent, the thought of her jeopardised money would throwher into agonies, and she would scheme perpetually to get it back. Like all the rest of Montjoie's creditors she was hanging on theMaenad, which promised indeed to be the _chef--d'oeuvre_ of anindisputable talent, could that talent only be kept to work. Whenthe sculptor--whose curiosity had been originally roused by certainphrases of Barbier's in his preliminary letters to his nephew, phrases embellished by Dubois' habitual _fanfaronnade_--hadfirst beheld the English girl, he had temporarily thrown up hiswork and was lounging about Paris in moody despair, to MadameCervin's infinite disgust. But at sight of Louie his artist's zealrekindled. Her wild nature, her half-human eye, the traces of Greekform in the dark features--these things fired and excited him. 

'Get me that girl to sit, ' he had said to Madame Cervin, 'and theMaenad will be sold in six weeks!'

And Madame Cervin, fully determined on the one hand that Montjoieshould finish his statue and pay his debts, and on the other thatthe English girl should come to no harm from a man of notoriouscharacter, had first led up to the sittings, and then superintendedthem with the utmost vigilance. She meant no harm--the brother wasa fool for his pains--but Montjoie should have his sitter. So shesat there, dragon-like, hour after hour, knitting away with herlittle fat hands, while Louie posed, and Montjoie worked; andgroups of the sculptor's friends came in and out, providing theaudience which excited the ambition of the man and the vanity ofthe girl. 

So the days passed. At last there came a morning when Louie cameout early from the Cervins' door, shut it behind her, and ran upthe ladder-like stairs which led to David's room. 

'David!'

Her voice was pitched in no amiable key, as she violently shook thehandle of the door. But, call and shake as she might, there was noanswer, and after a while she paused, feeling a certainbewilderment. 

'It is ridiculous! He can't be out; it isn't half-past eight. It'sjust his tiresomeness. '

And she made another and still more vehement attempt, all to nopurpose. Not a sound was to be heard from the room within. But asshe was again standing irresolute, she heard a footstep behind heron the narrow stairs, and looking round saw the _concierge_, Madame Merichat. The woman's thin and sallow face--the face of aborn pessimist--had a certain sinister flutter in it. 

She held out a letter to the astonished Louie, saying at the sametime with a disagreeable smile:

'What is the use of knocking the house down when there is no onethere?'

'Where is he?' cried Louie, not understanding her, and looking atthe letter with stupefaction. 

The woman put it into her hand. 

'No one came back last night, ' she said with a shrug. 'Neithermonsieur nor mademoiselle; and this morning I receive orders tosend letters to "Barbizon, pres Fontainebleau. "'

Louie tore open her letter. It was from David, and dated Barbizon. He would be there, it said, for nearly a month. If she could waitwith Madame Cervin till he himself could take her home, well andgood. But if that were disagreeable to her, let her communicatewith him 'chez Madame Pyat, Barbizon, Fontainebleau, ' and he wouldwrite to Dora Lomax at once, and make arrangements for her to lodgethere, till he returned to Manchester. Some one could easily befound to look after her on the homeward journey if Madame Cervintook her to the train. Meanwhile he enclosed the money for twoweeks' _pension_ and twenty francs for pocket money. 

No other person was mentioned in the letter, and the writer offeredneither explanation nor excuses. 

Louie crushed the sheet in her hand, with an exclamation, hercheeks flaming. 

'So they are amusing themselves at Fontainebleau?' inquired MadameMerichat, who had been leaning against the wall, twisting her apronand studying the English girl with her hard, malicious eyes. 'Oh! Idon't complain; there was a letter for me too. Monsieur has paidall. But I regret for mademoiselle--if mademoiselle is surprised. '

She spoke to deaf ears. 

Louie pushed past her, flew downstairs, and rang the Cervins' bellviolently. Madame Cervin herself opened the door, and the girlthrew herself upon her, dragged her into the _salon_, and thensaid with the look and tone of a fury:

'Read that!'

She held out the crumbled letter. Madame Cervin adjusted herspectacles with shaking hands. 

'But it is in English!' she cried in despair. 

Louie could not have beaten her for not understanding. But, herselftrembling with excitement, she was forced to bring all the Frenchwords she knew to bear, and between them, somehow, piecemeal, Madame Cervin was brought to a vague understanding of the letter. 

'Gone to Fontainebleau!' she cried, subsiding on to the sofa. 'Butwhy, with whom?'

'Why, with that girl, that _creature--can't_ you understand?'said Louie, pacing up and down. 

'Ah, I will go and find out all about that!' said Madame Cervin, and hastily exchanging the blue cotton apron and jacket she wore inthe mornings in the privacy of her own apartment for her walkingdress, she whisked out to make inquiries. 

Louie was left behind, striding from end to end of the little_salon_, brows knit, every feature and limb tense with excitement. As the meaning of her discovery grew plainer to her, as sherealised what had happened, and what the bearing of it must beon herself and her own position, the tumult within her rose androse. After that day in the Louvre her native shrewdness had ofcourse very soon informed her of David's infatuation for the littleartist. And when it became plain, not only to her, but to all EliseDelaunay's acquaintance, there was much laughter and gossip on thesubject in the Cervins' apartment. It was soon discovered thatLouie had taken a dislike, which, perhaps, from the beginning hadbeen an intuitive jealousy, to Elise, and had, moreover, noinconvenient sensitiveness on her brother's account, which needprevent the discussion of his love affairs in her presence. So thediscussion went freely on, and Louie only regretted that, do whatshe would to improve herself in French, she understood so little ofit. But the tone towards Elise among Montjoie's set, especiallyfrom Montjoie himself, was clearly contemptuous and hostile; andLouie instinctively enjoyed the mud which she felt sure was beingthrown. 

Yet, incredible as it may seem, with all this knowledge on herpart, all this amusement at her brother's expense, all thisblackening of Elise's character, the possibility of such an eventas had actually occurred had never entered the sister'scalculations. 

And the reason lay in the profound impression which one side of hischaracter had made upon her during the five months they had beentogether. A complete stranger to the ferment of the lad'simagination, she had been a constant and chafed spectator of hisdaily life. The strong self-restraint of it had been one of themain barriers between them. She knew that she was always jarringupon him, and that he was always blaming her recklessness andself-indulgence. She hated his Spartan ways--his teetotalism, thesmall store he set by any personal comfort or luxury, his powers oflong-continued work, his indifference to the pleasures andamusements of his age, so far as Manchester could provide them. They were a reflection upon her, and many a gibe she had flung outat him about them. But all the same these ways of his had left amark upon her; they had rooted a certain conception of him in hermind. She knew perfectly well that Dora Lomax was in love with him, and what did he care? 'Not a ha'porth!' She had never seen him turnhis head for any girl; and when he had shown himself sarcastic onthe subject of her companions, she had cast about in vain formaterials wherewith to retort. 

And _now_! That he should fall in love with this Frenchgirl--that was natural enough; it had amused and pleased her to seehim lose his head and make a fool of himself like other people; butthat he should run away with her after a fortnight, withoutapparently a word of marrying her--leaving his sister in thelurch--

'_Hypocrite_!'

She clenched her hands as she walked. What was really surging inher was that feeling of _ownership_ with regard to David whichhad played so large a part in their childhood, even when she hadteased and plagued him most. She might worry and defy him; but nosooner did another woman appropriate him, threaten to terminate forgood that hold of his sister upon him which had been so latelyrenewed, than she was flooded with jealous rage. David had escapedher--he was hers no longer--he was Elise Delaunay's! Nothing thatshe did could scandalise or make him angry any more. He had senther money and washed his hands of her. As to his escorting her backto England in two or three weeks, that was just a lie! A man whotakes such a plunge does not emerge so soon or so easily. No, shewould have to go back by herself, leaving him to his intrigue. Thevery calmness and secretiveness of his letter was an insult. 'Mindyour own business, little girl--go home to work--and be good!'--that was what it seemed to say to her. She set her teeth over itin her wild anger and pride. 

At the same moment the outer door opened and Madame Cervin camebustling back again, bursting with news and indignation. 

Oh, there was no doubt at all about it, they had gone off together!Madame Merichat had seen them come downstairs about noon the daybefore. He was carrying a black bag and a couple of parcels. Shealso was laden; and about halfway down the street, Madame Merichat, watching from her window, had seen them hail a cab, get into it, and drive away, the cab turning to the right when they reached theBoulevard. 

Madame Cervin's wrath was loud, and stimulated moreover by personalalarm. One moment, remembering the scene in Montjoie's studio, shecried out, like the sister, on the brother's hypocrisy; the nextshe reminded her boarder that there was two weeks' _pension_owing. 

Louie smiled scornfully, drew out the notes from David's letter andflung them on the table. Then Madame Cervin softened, and tookoccasion to remember that condolence with the sister was at leastas appropriate to the situation as abuse of the brother. Sheattempted some consolation, nay, even some caresses, but Louie verysoon shook her off. 

'Don't talk to me! don't kiss me!' she said impatiently. 

And she swept out of the room, went to her own, and locked thedoor. Then she threw herself face downwards on her bed, andremained there for some time hardly moving. But with every minutethat passed, as it seemed, the inward smart grew sharper. She hadbeen hardly conscious of it, at first, this smart, in her rage andpride, but it was there. 

At last she could bear it quietly no longer. She sprang up andlooked about her. There, just inside the open press which held herwardrobe, were some soft white folds of stuff. Her eye gleamed: sheran to the cupboard and took out the Maenad's dress. During thelast few days she had somewhat tired of the sittings--she had atany rate been capricious and tiresome about them; and Montjoie, whowas more in earnest about this statue than he had been about anywork for years, was at his wit's end, first to control his owntemper, and next so to lure or drive his strange sitter as tomanage her without offending her. 

But to-day the dress recalled David--promised distraction andretaliation. She slipped off her tight gingham with hasty fingers, and in a few seconds she was transformed. The light folds floatedabout her as she walked impetuously up and down, studying everymovement in the glass, intoxicated by the polished clearness andwhiteness of her own neck and shoulders, the curves of her owngrace and youth. Many a night, even after a long sitting, had shelocked her door, made the gas flare, and sat absorbed before hermirror in this guise, throwing herself into one attitude afteranother, naively regretting that sculpture took so long, and thatMontjoie could not fix them all. The ecstasy of self-worship inwhich the whole process issued was but the fruition of thatchildish habit which had wrought with childish things for the sameend--with a couple of rushlights, an old sheet and primroses fromthe brook. 

Her black abundant hair was still curled about her head. Well, shecould pull it down in the studio--now for a wrap--and then nonoise! She would slip downstairs so that madame should know nothingabout it. She was tired of that woman always at her elbow. Let hergo marketing and leave other people in peace. 

But before she threw on her wrap she stood still a moment, hernostril quivering, expanding, one hand on her hip, the otherswinging her Maenad's tambourine. She knew very little of thissculptor-man--she did not understand him; but he interested, tosome extent overawed, her. He had poured out upon her the coarsestflatteries, yet she realised that he had not made love to her. Perhaps Madame Cervin had been in the way. Well, now for asurprise and a _tete-a-tete_! A dare-devil look--her mother'slook--sprang into her eyes. 

She opened the door, and listened. No one in the little passage, only a distant sound of rapid talking, which suggested to the girlthat madame was at that moment enjoying the discussion of herboarder's affairs with monsieur, who was still in bed. She hurriedon a waterproof which covered her almost from top to toe. Then, holding up her draperies, she stole out, and on to the publicstairs. 

They were deserted, and running down them she turned to the rightat the bottom and soon found herself at the high studio door. 

As she raised her hand to the bell she flushed with passion. 

'I'll let him see whether I'll go home whining to Dora, while he'samusing himself, ' she said under her breath. 

The door was opened to her by Montjoie himself, in his workingblouse, a cigarette in his mouth. His hands and dress were daubedwith clay, and he had the brutal look of a man in the blackest oftempers. But no sooner did he perceive Louie Grieve's statelyfigure in the passage than his expression changed. 

'You--you here! and for a sitting?'

She nodded, smiling. Her look had an excitement which he perceivedat once. His eye travelled to the white drapery and the beautifulbare arm emerging from the cloak; then he looked behind her forMadame Cervin. 

No one--except this Maenad in a waterproof. Montjoie threw away hiscigarette. 

'_Entrez, entrez, mademoiselle!_' he said, bowing low to her. 'When the heavens are blackest, then they open. I was in a mind towring the Maenad's neck three minutes ago. Come and save yourportrait!'

He led her in through the ante-room into the large outer studio. There stood the Maenad on her revolving stand, and there was theraised platform for the model. A heap of clay was to one side, andwater was dripping from the statue on to the floor. The studiolight had a clear evenness; and, after the heat outside, thecoolness of the great bare room was refreshing. 

They stood and looked at the statue together, Louie still in hercloak. Montjoie pointed out to her that he was at work on theshoulders and the left arm, and was driven mad by the difficultiesof the pose. '_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ when I heard you knock, Ifelt like a murderer; I rushed out to let fly at someone. And therewas my Maenad on the mat!--all by herself, too, without that littlepiece of ugliness from upstairs behind her. I little thought thisday--this cursed day--was to turn out so. I thought you were tiredof the poor sculptor--that you had deserted him for good and all. Ah! _deesse--je vous salue_!'

He drew back from her, scanning her from head to foot, a new tonein his voice, a new boldness in his deep-set eyes--eyes which werealready old. Louie stood instinctively shrinking, yet smiling, understanding something of what he said, guessing more. 

There was a bull-necked strength about the man, with his dark, square, weather-beaten head, and black eyebrows, which made herafraid, in spite of the smooth and deprecating manner in which hegenerally spoke to women. But her fear of him was not unpleasant toher. She liked him; she would have liked above all to quarrel withhim; she felt that he was her match, He stepped forward, touchedher arm, and took a tone of command. 

'Quick, mademoiselle, with that cloak!'

She mounted the steps, threw off her cloak, and fell into herattitude without an instant's hesitation. Montjoie, putting hishands over his eyes to look at her, exclaimed under his breath. 

It was perfectly true that, libertine as he was, he had so far feltno inclination whatever to make love to the English girl. Nor wasthe effect merely the result of Madame Cervin's vigilance. Personally, for all her extraordinary beauty, his new model lefthim cold. Originally he had been a man of the most complex artisticinstincts, the most delicate and varied perceptions. They and hiscraftsman's skill were all foundering now in a sea of evil living. But occasionally they were active still, and they had served himfor the instant detection of that common egotistical paste of whichLouie Grieve was made. He would have liked to chain her to hismodel's platform, to make her the slave of his fevered degeneratingart. But she had no thrill for him. While he was working from herhis mind was often running on some little _grisette_ or other, who had not half Louie Grieve's physical perfection, but who hadcharm, provocation, wit--all that makes the natural heritage of theFrench woman, of whatever class. At the same time it had been anirritation and an absurdity to him that, under Madame Cervin's eye, he had been compelled to treat her with the ceremonies due to_une jeune fille honnete. _ For he had at once detected thegirl's reckless temper. From what social stratum did she come--sheand the brother? In her, at least, there was some wild blood! Whenhe sounded Madame Cervin, however, she, with her incurable habit ofvain mendacity, had only put her lodger in a light which Montjoiefelt certain was a false one. 

But this morning! Never had she been so superb, so inspiring! Allthe vindictive passion, all the rage with David that was surgingwithin her, did but give the more daring and decision to herattitude, and a wilder power to her look. Moreover, the boldness ofher unaccompanied visit to him provoked and challenged him. Helooked at her irresolutely; then with an effort he turned to hisstatue and fell to work. The touch of the clay, the reaction frompast despondency prevailed; before half an hour was over he wasmore enamoured of his task than he had ever yet been, and morefiercely bent on success. Insensibly as the time passed, his tonewith her became more and more short, brusque, imperious. Once ortwice he made some rough alteration in the pose, with theoverbearing haste of a man who can hardly bear to leave the workunder his hands even for an instant. When he first assumed thismanner Louie opened her great eyes. Then it seemed to please her. She felt no regret whatever for the smooth voice; the moredictatorial he became the better she liked it, and the moresubmissive she was. 

This went on for about a couple of hours--an orgie of work on hisside, of excited persistence on hers. Her rival in the clay grew inlife and daring under her eyes, rousing in her, whenever she wasallowed to rest a minute and look, a new intoxication with herself. They hardly talked. He was too much absorbed in what he was doing;and she also was either bent upon her task, or choked by wild gustsof jealous and revengeful thought. Every now and then as she stoodthere, in her attitude of eager listening, the wall of the studiowould fade before her eyes, and she would see nothing but atorturing vision of David at Fontainebleau, wrapt up in 'thatcreature, ' and only remembering his sister to rejoice that he hadshaken her off. _Ah_! How could she sufficiently avengeherself! how could she throw all his canting counsels to the windswith most emphasis and effect!

At last a curious thing happened. Was it mere nervous reactionafter such a strain of will and passion, or was it the suddenemergence of something in the sister which was also common tothe brother--a certain tragic susceptibility, the capacity fora wild melancholy? For, in an instant, while she was thinkingvaguely of Madame Cervin and her money affairs, _despair_ seizedher--shuddering, measureless despair--rushing in upon her, andsweeping away everything else before it. She tottered under it, fighting down the clutch of it as long as she could. It had nowords, it was like a physical agony. All that was clear to her forone lurid moment was that she would like to kill herself. 

The studio swam before her, and she dropped into the chair behindher. 

Montjoie gave a protesting cry. 

'Twenty minutes more!--_Courage_!'

Then, as she made no answer, he went up to her and put a violenthand on her shoulder--beside himself. 

'You _shall_ not be tired, I tell you. Look up! look at me!'

Under the stimulus of his master's tone she slowly recoveredherself--her great black eyes lifted. He gazed into them steadily;his voice sank. 

'You belong to me, ' he said with breathless rapidity. 'Do youunderstand? What is the matter with you? What are those tears?'

A cry of nature broke from her. 

'My brother has left me--with that girl!'

She breathed out the words into the ears of the man stoopingtowards her. His great brow lifted--he gave a little laugh. Theneagerly, triumphantly, he seized her again by the arms. '_A labonne heure_! Then it is plainer still. You belong to me and Ito you. In that statue we live and die together. Another hour, andit will be a masterpiece. Come! one more!'

She drank in his tone of mad excitement as though it were wine, andit revived her. The strange grip upon her heart relaxed; thenightmare was dashed aside. Her colour came back, and, pushing himproudly away from her, she resumed her pose without a word. 

CHAPTER VIII

'Do you know, sir, that that good woman has brought in the soup forthe second time? I can see her fidgeting about the table throughthe window. If we go on like this, she will depart and leave us towait on ourselves. Then see if you get any soup out of _me_. '

David, for all answer, put his arm close round the speaker. Shethrew herself back against him, smiling into his face. But neithercould see the other, for it was nearly dark, and through the acaciatrees above them the stars glimmered in the warm sky. To theirleft, across a small grass-plat, was a tiny thatched house buriedunder a great vine which embowered it all from top to base, andoverhung by trees which drooped on to the roof, and swept thewindows with their branches. Through a lower window, opening on tothe gravel path, could be seen a small bare room, with a paper ofcoarse brown and blue pattern, brightly illuminated by a paraffinlamp, which also threw a square of light far out into the garden. The lamp stood on a table which was spread for a meal, and a stoutwoman, in a white cap and blue cotton apron, could be seen movingbeside it. 

'Come in!' said Elise, springing to her feet, and laying acompelling hand on her companion. 'Get it over! The moon is waitingfor us out there!'

And she pointed to where, beyond the roofs of the neighbouringhouses, rose the dark fringe of trees which marked the edge of theforest. 

They went in, hand in hand, and sat opposite each other at thelittle rickety table, while the peasant woman from whom they hadtaken the house waited upon them. The day before, after looking atthe _auberge_, and finding it full of artists come down tolook for spring subjects in the forest, they had wandered onsearching for something less public, more poetical. And they hadstumbled upon this tiny overgrown house in its tangled garden. Thewoman to whom it belonged had let it for the season, but till thebeginning of her 'let' there was a month; and, after muchpersuasion, she had consented to allow the strangers to hire it andher services as _bonne_, by the week, for a sum more congruouswith the old and primitive days of Barbizon than with the laterclaims of the little place to fashion and fame. As the lovers stoodtogether in the _salon_, exclaiming with delight at its barefloor, its low ceiling, its old bureau, its hard sofa with theEmpire legs, and the dilapidated sphinxes on the arms, theowner of the house looked them up and down, from the door, withcomprehending eyes. Barbizon had known adventures like this before!

But she might think what she liked; it mattered nothing to herlodgers. To 'a pair of romantics out of date, ' the queer overgrownplace she owned was perfection, and they took possession of it in adream of excitement and joy. From the top loft, still bare andechoing, where the highly respectable summer tenants were to put upthe cots of their children, to the outside den which served for akitchen, whence a wooden ladder led to a recess among the rafters, occupied by Madame Pyat as a bedroom; from the masses of Virginiacreeper on the thatched roof to the thicket of acacias and roses onthe front grass-plat, and the high flowery wall which shut them offfrom the curious eyes of the street, it was all, in the lovers'feeling, the predestined setting for such an idyll as theirs. 

And if this was so in the hot mornings and afternoons, how muchmore in the heavenly evenings and nights, when the forest laywhispering and murmuring under the moonlight, and they, wanderingtogether arm in arm under the gaunt and twisted oaks of the BasBreau, or among the limestone blocks which strew the heights ofthis strange woodland, felt themselves part of the world aboutthem, dissolved into its quivering harmonious life, shades amongits shadows!

On this particular evening, after the hurried and homely meal, David brought Elise's large black hat, and the lace scarf whichhad bewitched him at St. Germain--oh, the joy of handling suchthings in this familiar, sacrilegious way!--and they strolledout into the long uneven street beyond their garden wall, ontheir way to the forest. The old inn to the left was in a clatter. Two _diligences_ had just arrived, and the horses were droopingand panting at the door. A maidservant was lighting guests acrossthe belittered courtyard with a flaring candle. There was a redglimpse of the kitchen with its brass and copper pans, and on thebench outside the gateway sat a silent trio of artists, who hadworked well and dined abundantly, and were now enjoying their lastsmoke before the sleep, to which they were already nodding, shouldovertake them. The two lovers stepped quickly past, making with allhaste for that leafy mystery beyond cleft by the retreatingwhiteness of the Fontainebleau road--into which the village meltedon either side. 

Such moonlight! All the tones of the street, its white and greys, the reddish brown of the roofs, were to be discerned under it; andoutside in the forest it was a phantasmagoria, an intoxication. Thelittle paths they were soon threading, paths strewn with limestonedust, wound like white threads among the rocks and through theblackness of the firs. They climbed them hand in hand, and soonthey were on a height looking over a great hollow of the forest tothe plain beyond, as it were a vast cup overflowing with moonlightand melting into a silver sky. The width of the heavens, the dimimmensity of the earth, drove them close together in a delicioussilence. The girl put the warmth of her lover's arm between her andthe overpowering greatness of a too august nature. The man, on theother hand, rising in this to that higher stature which was trulyhis, felt himself carried out into nature on the wave of his ownboundless emotion. That cold Deism he had held so loosely brokeinto passion. The humblest phrases of worship, of entreaty, sweptacross the brain. 

'Could one ever have guessed, ' he asked her, his words stumblingand broken, 'that such happiness was possible?'

She shook her head, smiling at him. 

'Yes, certainly!--if one has read poems and novels. Nothing to meis ever _more_ than I expect, --generally less. '

Then she broke off hesitating, and hid her face against his breast. A pang smote him. He cried out in the old commonplaces that he wasnot worthy, that she must tire of him, that there was nothing inhim to hold, to satisfy her. 

'And three weeks ago, ' she said, interrupting him, 'we had neverheard each other's names. Strange--life is strange! Well, now, ' andshe quickly drew herself away from him, and holding him by bothhands lightly swung his arms backwards and forwards, 'this can'tlast for ever, you know. In the first place--we shall die. ' andthrowing herself back, she pulled against him childishly, a sprayof ivy he had wound round her hat drooping with fantastic shadowsover her face and neck. 

'Do you know what you are like?' he asked her, evading what she hadsaid, while his eyes devoured her. 

'No!'

'You are like that picture in the Louvre, --Da Vinci's St. John, that you say should be a Bacchus. '

'Which means that you find me a queer, --heathenish, --sort ofcreature?' she said, still laughing and swaying. 'So I am. Takecare! Well now, a truce to love-making! I am tired of being meekand charming--this night excites me. Come and see the oaks in theBas Breau. '

And running down the rocky path before them she led him in and outthrough twisted leafy ways, till at last they stood among theblasted giants of the forest, the oaks of the Bas Breau. In theemboldening daylight, David, with certain English wood scenes inhis mind, would swear the famous trees of Fontainebleau had neithersize nor age to speak of. But at night they laid their avengingspell upon him. They stood so finely on the broken ground, each ofthem with a kingly space about him; there was so wild a fantasy intheir gnarled and broken limbs; and under the night their scantycrowns of leaf, from which the sap was yearly ebbing, had so loftya remoteness. 

They found a rocky seat in front of a certain leafless monster, which had been struck by lightning in a winter storm years before, and rent from top to bottom. The bare trunk with its torn branchesyawning stood out against the rest, a black and melancholy shape, preaching desolation. But Elise studied it coolly. 

'I know that tree by heart, ' she declared. 'Corot, Rousseau, Diaz--it has served them all. I could draw it with my eyes shut. '

Then with the mention of drawing she began to twist her fingersrestlessly. 

'I wonder what the _concours_ was to-day, ' she said. 'Now thatI am away that Breal girl will carry off everything. There will beno bearing her--she was never second till I came. '

David took a very scornful view of this contingency. 'When yougo back you will beat them all again; let them have their fewweeks' respite! You told me yesterday you had forgotten the_atelier_. '

'Did I?' she said with a strange little sigh. 'It wasn't true--Ihaven't. '

With a sudden whim she pulled off his broad hat and threw it down. Reaching forward she took his head between her hands, and arrangedhis black curls about his brow in a way to suit her. Then, stillholding him, she drew back with her head on one side to look athim. The moon above them, now at its full zenith of brightness, threw the whole massive face into strong relief, and her own lookmelted into delight. 

'There is no model in Paris, ' she declared, 'with so fine a head. 'Then with another sigh she dropped her hold, and propping her chinon her hands, she stared straight before her in silence. 

'Do you imagine you are _the first?_' she asked him presently, with a queer abruptness. 

There was a pause. 

'You told me so, ' he said, at last, his voice quivering; 'don'tdeceive me--there is no fun in it--I believe it all!'

She laughed, and did not answer for a moment. He put out hiscovetous arms and would have drawn her to him, but she withdrewherself. 

'What did I tell you? I don't remember. In the first place therewas a cousin--there is always a cousin!'

He stared at her, his face flushing, and asked her slowly what shemeant. 

'You have seen his portrait in my room, ' she said coolly. 

He racked his brains. 

'Oh! that portrait on the wall, ' he burst out at last, in vaintrying for a tone as self-possessed as her own, ' that man with ashort beard?'

She nodded. 

'Oh, he is not bad at all, my cousin. He is the son of that uncleand aunt I told you of. Only while they were rusting in theGironde, he was at Paris learning to be a doctor, and enlarging hismind by coming to see me every week. When they came up to town toput in a claim to me, _they_ thought me a lump of wickedness, as I told you; I made their hair stand on end. But Guillaume knew agood deal more about me; and _he_ was not scandalised at all;oh dear, no. He used to come every Saturday and sit in a cornerwhile I painted--a long lanky creature, rather good looking, butwith spectacles--he has ruined his eyes with reading. Oh, he wouldhave married me any day, and let his relations shriek as theyplease; so don't suppose, Monsieur David, that I have had nochances of respectability, or that my life began with you!' Shethrew him a curious look. 

'Why do you talk about him?' cried David, beside himself. 'What isyour cousin to either of us?'

'I shall talk of what I like, ' she said wilfully, clasping herhands round her knees with the gesture of an obstinate child. 

David stared away into the black shadow of the oaks, marvelling athimself? at the strength of that sudden smart within him, thathalf-frenzied restlessness and dread which some of her lightestsayings had the power to awaken in him. 

Then he repented him, and turning, bent his head over the littlehands and kissed them passionately. She did not move or speak. Hecame close to her, trying to decipher her face in the moonlight. For the first time since that night in the studio there was a filmof sudden tears in the wide grey eyes. He caught her in his armsand demanded why. 

'You quarrel with me and dictate to me, ' she cried, wrestling withherself, choked by some inexplicable emotion, 'when I have given youeverything? when I am alone in the world with you? at your mercy? Iwho have been so proud, have held my head so high!'

He bent over her, pouring into her ear all the words that passioncould find or forge. Her sudden attack upon him, poor fellow, seemed to him neither unjust nor extravagant. She _had_ givenhim everything, and who and what was he that she should have thrownhim so much as a look!

Gradually her mysterious irritation died away. The gentleness ofthe summer night, the serenity of the moonlight, the sea-likemurmur of the forest, these things sank little by little into theirhearts, and in the calm they made, youth and love spoke again, siren voices, with the old magic. And when at last they loiteredhome, they moved in a trance of feeling which wanted no words. Themoon dropped slowly into the western trees; midnight chimes came tothem from the villages which ring the forest; and a playing windsprang up about them, cooling the girl's hot cheeks, and fresheningthe verdurous ways through which they passed. 

But in the years which came after, whenever David allowed his mindto dwell for a short shuddering instant on these days atFontainebleau, it often occurred to him to wonder whether duringtheir wild dream he had ever for one hour been truly happy. At theheight of their passion had there been any of that exquisite giveand take between them which may mark the simplest love of therudest lovers, but which is in its essence moral, a thing not ofthe senses but of the soul? There is nothing else which is vital tolove. Without it passion dies into space like the flaming corona ofthe sun. With it, the humblest hearts may 'bear it out even to theedge of doom. '

There can be no question that after the storm of feeling, excitement, pity, which had swept her into his arms, he gained uponher vagrant fancy for a time day by day. Seen close, his socialsimplicity, his delicately tempered youth had the effect of greatrefinement. He had in him much of the peasant nature, but somodified by fine perception and wide-ranging emotion, that what hadbeen coarseness in his ancestors was in him only a certain richsavour and fulness of being. His mere sympathetic, sensitiveinstinct had developed in him all the essentials of good manners, and books, poetry, observation had done the rest. 

So that in the little matters of daily contact he touched andcharmed her unexpectedly. He threw no veil whatever over histradesman's circumstances, and enjoyed trying to make herunderstand what had been the conditions and prospects of hisManchester life. He had always, indeed, conceived his bookseller'sprofession with a certain dignity; and he was secretly proud, witha natural conceit, of the efforts and ability which had brought himso rapidly to the front. How oddly the Manchester names and factssounded in the forest air! She would sit with her little head onone side listening; but privately he suspected that she understoodvery little of it; that she accepted him and his resources verymuch in the vague with the _insouciance_ of Bohemia. 

He himself, however, was by no means without plans for thefuture. In the first flush of his triumphant passion he hadwon from her the promise of a month alone with him, in or nearFontainebleau--her own suggestion--after which she was to go backin earnest to her painting, and he was to return to Manchester andmake arrangements for their future life together. Louie must beprovided for, and after that his ideas about himself were alreadytolerably clear. In one of his free intervals, during his firstdays in Paris, he had had a long conversation one evening with theowner of an important bookshop on the Quai St. -Michel. The manbadly wanted an English clerk with English connections. David madecertain of the opening, should he choose to apply for it. And ifnot there, then somewhere else. With the consciousness of capital, experience, and brains, to justify him, he had no fears. Meanwhile, John should keep on the Manchester shop, and he, David, would goover two or three times a year to stock-take and make up accounts. John was as honest as the day, and had already learnt much. 

But although his old self had so far reasserted itself; althoughthe contriving activity of the brain was all still there, ready tobe brought to bear on this new life when it was wanted; Elise couldnever mistake him, or the true character of this crisis of hisyouth. The self-surrender of passion had transformed, developed himto an amazing extent, and it found its natural language. As shegrew deeper and deeper into the boy's heart, and as the cloud ofdiffidence which had enwrapped him since he came to Paris gave way, so that even in this brilliant France he ventured at last toexpress his feelings and ideas, the poet and thinker in him grewbefore her eyes. She felt a new consideration, a new intellectualrespect for him. 

But above all his tenderness, his womanish consideration andsweetness amazed her. She had been hotly wooed now and then, butwith no one, not even 'the cousin, ' had she ever been on terms ofreal intimacy. And for the rest she had lived a rough-and-tumble, independent life, defending herself first of all against the bigboys of the farm, then against her father, or her comrades in the_atelier_, or her Bohemian suitors. The ingenuity of serviceDavid showed in shielding and waiting upon her bewildered her--had, for a time, a profound effect upon her. 

And yet!--all the while--what jars and terrors from the verybeginning! He seemed often to be groping in the dark with her. Whole tracts of her thought and experience were mysteries to him, and grew but little plainer with their new relation. Little as heknew or would have admitted it, the gulf of nationality yawned deepbetween them. And those artistic ambitions of hers--as soon as theyre-emerged on the other side of the first intoxication ofpassion--they were as much of a jealousy and a dread to him asbefore. His soul was as alive as it had ever been to the threat andperil of them. 

Their relation itself, too--to her, perhaps, secretly aguarantee--was to him a perpetual restlessness. _L'unionlibre_ as the French artist understands it was not in his socialtradition, whatever might be his literary assimilation of Frenchideas. He might passionately adopt and defend it, because it washer will; none the less was he, at the bottom of his heart, bothashamed and afraid because of it. From the very beginning he hadlet her know that she had only to say the word and he was ready tomarry her instantly. But she put him aside with an impatient waveof her little hand, a nervous, defiant look in her grey eyes. Yetone day, when in the little village shop of Barbizon, a womanstanding beside Elise at the counter looked her insolently overfrom head to foot, and took no notice of a question addressed toher on the subject of one of the forest routes, the girl felt andunexpected pang of resentment and shame. 

One afternoon, in a lonely part of the forest, she strained herfoot by treading on a loose stone among the rocks. Tired with longrambling and jarred by the shock she sank down, looking white andready to cry. Pain generally crushed and demoralized her. She wascapable, indeed, of setting the body at defiance on occasion; but, as a rule, she had no physical fortitude, and did not pretend toit. 

David was much perplexed. So far as he knew, they were not near anyof the huts which are dotted over the forest and provide thetourist with _consommations_ and carved articles. There was nowater wherewith to revive her or to bandage the foot, forFontainebleau has no streams. All he could do was to carry her. Andthis he did, with the utmost skill, and with a leaping thrill oftenderness which made itself felt by the little elfish creature inthe clasp of his arms, and in the happy leaning of his dark cheekto hers, as she held him round the neck. 

'Paul and Virginia!' she said to him, laughing. "_He bore her inhis arms!_"--all heroes do it--in reality, most women wouldbreak the hero's back. 'Confess _I_ am even lighter than youthought!'

'As light as Venus' doves, ' he swore to her. 'Bid me carry you toParis and see. '

'Paris!' At the mention of it she fell silent, and the corners ofher mouth drooped into gravity. But he strode happily on, perceiving nothing. 

Then when they got home, she limping through the village, he put onthe airs of a surgeon, ran across to the grocer, who kept a tiny_pharmacie_ in one corner of his miscellaneous shop, andconferred with him to such effect that the injured limb was soonlotioned and bandaged in a manner which made David inordinatelyproud of himself. Once, as he was examining his handiwork, itoccurred to him that it was Mr. Ancrum who had taught him to usehis fingers neatly. _Mr. Ancrum!_ At the thought of his namethe young man felt an inward shrinking, as though from contact witha cold and alien order of things. How hard to realise, indeed, thatthe same world contained Manchester with its factories and chapels, and this perfumed forest, this little overgrown house!

Afterwards, as he sat beside her, reading, as quiet as a mouse, sothat she might sleep if the tumble-down Empire sofa did but woo herthat way, she suddenly put up her arm and drew him down to her. 

'Who taught you all this--this tenderness?' she said to him, in acurious wistful tone, as though her question were the outcome of along reverie. 'Was it your mother?'

David started. He had never spoken to her or to anyone of hismother, and he could not bring himself to do so now. 

'My mother died when I was five years old, ' he said reluctantly. 'Why don't you go to sleep, little restless thing? Is the bandageright?'

'Quite. I can imagine, ' she said presently in a low tone, lettinghim go, 'I can imagine one might grow so dependent on all thischerishing, so horribly dependent!'

'Well, and why not?' he said, taking up her hand and kissing it. 'What are we made for, but to be your bondslaves?'

She drew her hand away, and let it fall beside her with animpatient sigh. The poor boy looked at her with frightened eyes. Then some quick instinct came to the rescue, and his expressionchanged completely. 

'I have thought it all out, ' he began, speaking with a brisk, business-like air, 'what I shall do at Manchester, and when I getback here. '

And he hung over her, chattering and laughing about his plans. Whatdid she say to a garret and a studio somewhere near the QuaiSt. -Michel, in the Quartier Latin, rooms whence they might catch aglimpse of the Seine and Notre-Dame, where she would be within easyreach of Taranne's studio, and the Luxembourg, and the Ecole desBeaux-Arts, and the Louvre rooms where after their day's work theymight meet, shut out the world and let in heaven--a home consecrateat once to art and love?

The quick bright words flowed without a check; his eye shone asthough it caught the light of the future. But she lay turned awayfrom him, silent, till at last she stopped him with a restlessgesture. 

'Don't--don't talk like that! As soon as one dares to reckon onHim--_le bon Dieu_ strikes--just to let one know one's place. And don't drive me mad about my art! You saw me try to draw thismorning; you might be quiet about it, I think, _par pitie!_ IfI ever had any talent--which is not likely, or I should have hadsome notices of my pictures by this time--it is all dead and donefor. '

And turning quite away from him, she buried her face in thecushion. 

'Look here, ' he said to her, smiling and stooping, 'shall I tell yousomething? I forgot it till now. '

She shook her head, but he went on:

You remember this morning while I was waiting for you, I went intothe inn to ask about the way to the Gorges d'Affremont. I had yourpainting things with me. I didn't know whether you wanted them ornot, and I laid them down on the table in the _cour_, while Iwent in to speak to madame. Well, when I came out, there were acouple of artists there, those men who have been here all the timepainting, and they had undone the strap and were looking at thesketch--you know, that bit of beechwood with the rain coming on. Irushed at them. But they only grinned, and one of them, the youngman with the fair moustache, sent you his compliments. You musthave, he said, "very remarkable dispositions indeed. " Perhaps Ilooked as if I knew that before! Whose pupil were you? I told him, and he said I was to tell you to stick to Taranne. You were one ofthe _peintres de temperament_, and it was they especially whomust learn their grammar, and learn it from the classics; and theother man, the old bear who never speaks to anybody, nodded andlooked at the sketch again, and said it was "amusing--not bad atall, " and you might make something of it for the next Salon. '

Cunning David! By this time Elise had her arm round his neck, andwas devouring his face with her keen eyes. Everything was shakenoff--the pain of her foot, melancholy, fatigue--and all thehorizons of the soul were bright again. She had a new idea!--whatif she were to combine his portrait with the beechwood sketch, andmake something large and important of it? He had the head of apoet--the forest was in its most poetical moment. Why not pose himat the foot of the great beech to the left, give him a bookdropping from his hand, and call it 'Reverie'?

For the rest of the day she talked or sketched incessantly. Shewould hardly be persuaded to give her bandaged foot the afternoon'srest, and by eight o'clock next morning they were off to theforest, she limping along with a stick. 

Two or three days of perfect bliss followed. The picture promisedexcellently. Elise was in the most hopeful mood, alert and merry asa bird. And when they were driven home by hunger, the work stillwent on. For they had turned their top attic into a studio, andhere as long as the light lasted she toiled on, wrestling with thehead and the difficulties of the figure. But she was determined tomake it substantially a picture _en plein air_. Her mind wasfull of all the daring conceptions and ideals which were thenemerging in art, as in literature, from the decline of Romanticism. The passion for light, for truth, was, she declared, penetrating, and revolutionising the whole artistic world. Delacroix had astudio to the south; she also would 'bedare the sun. '

At the end of the third day she threw herself on him in a passionof gratitude and delight, lifting her soft mouth to be kissed. 

'_Embrasse-moi! Embrasse-moi! Blague a part, --je commence a mesentir artiste!_'

And they wandered about their little garden till past midnight, hand close in hand. She could talk of nothing but her picture, andhe, feeling himself doubly necessary and delightful to her, overflowed with happiness and praise. 

But next day things went less well. She was torn, overcome by thedifficulties of her task. Working now in the forest, now at home, the lights and values had suffered. The general tone had neither anindoor nor an outdoor truth. She must repaint certain parts, workonly out of doors. Then all the torments of the outdoor painterbegan: wind, which put her in a nervous fever, and rain, which, after the long spell of fine weather, began to come down on them, and drive them into shelter. 

Soon she was in despair. She had been too ambitious. The landscapeshould have been the principal thing, the figure only indicated, asuggestion in the middle distance. She had carried it too far; itfought with its surroundings; the picture had no unity, no repose. Oh, for some advice! How could one pull such a thing throughwithout help? In three minutes Taranne would tell her what waswrong. 

In twenty-four hours more she had fretted herself ill. The picturewas there in the corner, turned to the wall; he could only justprevent her from driving her palette-knife through it. And shewas sitting on the edge of the sofa, silent, a book on herknee, her hands hanging beside her, and her feverish eyeswandering--wandering round the room, if only they might escape fromDavid, might avoid seeing him--or so he believed. Horrible! It wasborne in upon him that in this moment of despair he was little moreto her than the witness, the occasion, of her discomfiture. 

Oh! his heart was sore. But he could do nothing. Caresses, encouragements, reproaches, were alike useless. For some time shewould make no further attempts at drawing; nor would she be wooedand comforted. She held him passively at arm's length, and he couldmake nothing of her. It was the middle of their third week; stillalmost the half left of this month she had promised him. Andalready it was clear to him that he and love had lost their firsthold, and that she was consumed with the unspoken wish to go backto Paris, and the _atelier_. Ah, no!--_no!_ With a fierceyet dumb tenacity he held her to her bargain. Those weeks were his;they represented his only hope for the future; she _should_not have them back. 

But he, too, fell into melancholy and silence, and on the afternoonwhen this change in him first showed itself she was, for a time, touched, ashamed. A few pale smiles returned for him, and in theevening, as he was sitting by the open window, a newspaper on hisknee, staring into vacancy, she came up to him, knelt beside him, and drew his half-reluctant arm about her. Neither said anything, but gradually her presence there, on his breast, thrilled throughall his veins, filled his heart to bursting. The paper slid away;he put both arms about her, and bowed his head on hers. She put upher small hand, and felt the tears on his cheek. Then a stillstronger repentance woke up in her. 

'_Pauvre enfant!_' she said, pushing herself away from him, and tremulously drying his eyes. 'Poor Monsieur David--I make youvery unhappy! But I warned you--oh, I _warned_ you! What evilstar made you fall in love with me?'

In answer he found such plaintive and passionate things to say toher that she was fairly melted, and in the end there was aneffusion on both sides, which seemed to bring back their goldenhours. But at bottom, David's sensitive instinct, do what he wouldto silence it, told him, in truth, that all was changed. He was nolonger the happy and triumphant lover. He was the beggar, livingupon her alms. 

CHAPTER IX

Next morning David went across to the village shop to buy somedaily necessaries, and found a few newspapers lying on the counter. He bought a _Debats_, seeing that there was a long critique ofthe Salon in it, and hurried home with it to Elise. She tore itopen and rushed through the article, putting him aside that hemight not look over her. Her face blanched as she read, and at theend she flung the paper from her, and tottering to a chair satthere motionless, staring straight before her. David, besidehimself with alarm, and finding caresses of no avail, took up thepaper from the floor. 

'Let it alone!' she said to him with a sudden imperious gesture. 'There is a whole paragraph about Breal--her fortune is made. _Lavoila lancee--arrivee!_ And of me, not a line, not a mention!Three or four pupils of Taranne--all beginners--but _my_name--nowhere! Ah, but no--it is too much!'

Her little foot beat the ground, a hurricane was rising within her. 

David tried to laugh the matter off. 'The man who wrote the wretchedthing had been hurried--was an idiot, clearly, and what did oneman's opinion matter, even if it were paid for at so much a column?'

'_Mais, tais-toi, donc!_' she cried at last, turning upon him in afury. '_Can't_ you see that everything for an artist--especially awoman--depends on the _protections_ she gets at the beginning?How can a girl--helpless--without friends--make her way by herself?Some one must hold out a hand, and for me it seems there is noone--no one!'

The outburst seemed to his common sense to imply the most grotesqueoblivion of her success in the Salon, of Taranne's kindness--themost grotesque sensitiveness to a few casual lines of print. But itwrung his heart to see her agitation, her pale face, thehandkerchief she was twisting to shreds in her restless hands. Hecame to plead with her--his passion lending him eloquence. Let herbut trust herself and her gift. She had the praise of those sherevered to go upon. How should the carelessness of a single criticaffect her? _Imbeciles!_--they would be all with her, at herfeet, some day. Let her despise them then and now! But hisextravagances only made her impatient. 

'Nonsense!' she said, drawing her hand away from him; 'I am not madeof such superfine stuff--I never pretended to be! Do you think Ishould be content to be an unknown genius? _Never!_--I musthave my fame counted out to me in good current coin, that all theworld may hear and see. It may be vulgar--I don't care! it is so. _Ah, mon Dieu!_' and she began to pace the room with wildsteps, 'and it is my fault--my fault! If I were there on the spot, Ishould be remembered--they would have to reckon with me--I couldkeep my claim in sight. But I have thrown away everything--wastedeverything--_everything!_'

He stood with his back to the window, motionless, his hand onthe table, stooping a little forward, looking at her with apassion of reproach and misery; it only angered her; she lost allself-control, and in one mad moment she avenged on his poor heartall the wounds and vexations of her vanity. _Why_ had he everpersuaded her? _Why_ had he brought her away and hung a freshburden on her life which she could never bear? Why had he done herthis irreparable injury--taken all simplicity and directness of aimfrom her--weakened her energies at their source? Her only_milieu_ was art, and he had made her desert it; her onlypower was the painter's power, and it was crippled, the freshspring of it was gone. It was because she felt on her the weight ofa responsibility, and a claim she was not made for. She was notmade for love--for love at least as he understood it. And he hadher word, and would hold her to it. It was madness for both ofthem. It was stifling--killing her!

Then she sank on a chair, in a passion of desperate tears. Suddenly, as she sat there, she heard a movement, and looking upshe saw David at the door. He turned upon her for an instant, witha dignity so tragic, so true, and yet so young, that she wasperforce touched, arrested. She held out a trembling hand, made alittle cry. But he closed the door softly, and was gone. She halfraised herself, then fell back again. 

'If he had beaten me, ' she said to herself with a strange smile, 'Icould have loved him. _Mais!_'

She was all day alone. When he came back it was already evening;the stars shone in the June sky, but the sunset light was still inthe street and on the upper windows of the little house. As heopened the garden gate and shut it behind him, he saw the gleam ofa lamp behind the acacia, and a light figure beside it. He stood amoment wrestling with himself, for he was wearied out, and felt asif he could bear no more. Then he moved slowly on. 

Elise was sitting beside the lamp, her head bent over somethingdark upon her lap. She had not heard the gate open, and she did nothear his steps upon the grass. He came closer, and saw, to hisamazement, that she was busy with a coat of his--an old coat, inthe sleeve of which he had torn a great rent the day before, whilehe was dragging her and himself through some underwood in theforest. She--who loathed all womanly arts, who had often boasted tohim that she hardly knew how to use a needle!

In moving nearer, he brushed against the shrubs, and she heard him. She turned her head, smiling. In the mingled light she looked likea little white ghost, she was so pale and her eyes so heavy. Whenshe saw him, she raised her finger with a childish, aggrieved air, and put it to her lips, rubbing it softly against them. 

'It does prick so!' she said plaintively. 

He came to sit beside her, his chest heaving. 

'Why do you do that--for me?'

She shrugged her shoulders and worked on without speaking. Presently she laid down her needle and surveyed him. 

'Where have you been all day? Have you eaten nothing, poor friend?'

He tried to remember. 

'I think not; I have been in the forest. '

A little quiver ran over her face; she pulled at her needleviolently and broke the thread. 

'Finished!' she said, throwing down the coat and springing up. 'Don't tell your tailor who did it! I am for perfection in allthings--_abas l'amateur!_ Come in, it is supper-time past. Iwill go and hurry Madame Pyat. _Tu dois avoir une faim deloup_. '

He shook his head, smiling sadly. 

'I tell you, you are hungry, you shall be hungry!' she cried, suddenly flinging her arm round his neck, and nestling her fairhead against his shoulder. Her voice was half a sob. 

'Oh, so I am!--so I am!' he said, with a wild emphasis, and wouldhave caught her to him. But she slipped away and ran before him tothe house, turning at the window with the sweetest, frankestgesture to bid him follow. 

They passed the evening close together, she on a stool leaningagainst his knee, he reading aloud Alfred de Musset's _Nuit deMai_. At one moment she was all absorbed in the verse, carriedaway by it; great battle-cry that it is! calling the artist fromthe miseries of his own petty fate to the lordship of life andnature as a whole; the next she had snatched the book out of hishands and was correcting his accent, bidding him speak after her, put his lips so. Never had she been so charming. It was the coaxingcharm of the softened child that cannot show its penitence enough. Every now and then she fell to pouting because she could not movehim to gaiety. But in reality his sad and passive gentleness, themask of feelings which would otherwise have been altogether beyondhis control, served him with her better than any gaiety could havedone. 

_Gaiety!_ it seemed to him his heart was broken. 

At night, after a troubled sleep, he suddenly woke, and sprang upin an agony. _Gone!_ was she gone already? For that was whather sweet ways meant. Ah, he had known it all along!

Where was she? His wild eyes for a second or two saw nothing butthe landscape of his desolate dream. Then gradually the familiarforms of the room emerged from the gloom, and there--against thefurther wall--she lay, so still, so white, so gracious! Herchildish arm, bare to the elbow, was thrown round her head, hersoft waves of hair made a confusion on the pillow. After her longday of emotion she was sleeping profoundly. Whatever cruel secrether heart might hold, she was there still, his yet, for a few hoursand days. He was persuaded in his own mind that her penitence hadbeen the mere fruit of a compromise with herself, their month hadstill eight days to run, then--_adieu!_ Art and liberty shouldreclaim their own. Meanwhile why torment the poor boy, who must anyway take it hardly?

He lay there for long, raised upon his arm, his haggard look fixedon the sleeping form which by-and-by the dawn illuminated. His lifewas concentrated in that form, that light breath. He thought withrepulsion and loathing of all that had befallen him before he sawher--with anguish and terror of those days and nights to come whenhe should have lost her. For in the deep stillness of the risingday there fell on him the strangest certainty of this loss. Thatgift of tragic prescience which was in his blood had stirred inhim--he knew his fate. Perhaps the gift itself was but the fruit ofa rare power of self-vision, self-appraisement. He saw and cursedhis own timid and ignorant youth. How could he ever have hoped tohold a creature of such complex needs and passions? In the paledawn he sounded the very depths of self-contempt. 

But when the day was up and Elise was chattering and flitting aboutthe house as usual without a word of discord or parting, how was itpossible to avoid reaction, the re-birth of hope? She talked ofpainting again, and that alone, after these long days of sullenalienation from her art, was enough to bring the brightness back totheir little _menage_ and to dull that strange second sight ofDavid's. He helped her to set her palette, to choose a new canvas;he packed her charcoals, he beguiled some cold meat and bread outof Madame, and then before the heat they set out together for theBas Breau. 

Just as they started he searched his pockets for a knife of herswhich was missing, and thrusting his hand into a breast pocketwhich he seldom used, he brought out some papers at which he staredin bewilderment. 

Then a shock went through him; for there was Mr. Gurney's letter, the letter in which the cheque for 600 _pounds_ had been enclosed, and there was also that faded scrap of Sandy's writing whichcontained the father's last injunction to his son. As he held thepapers he remembered--what he had forgotten for weeks--that on themorning of his leaving Manchester he had put them carefully intothis breast pocket, not liking to leave things so interesting tohim behind him, out of his reach. Never had he given a thought tothem since! He looked down at them, half ashamed, and his eyecaught the words:--'_I lay it on him now I'm dying to look afterher. She's not like other children; she'll want it. Let him see hermarried to a decent man, and give her what's honestly hers. I trustit to him. That little lad_--' and then came the fold of thesheet. 

'I have found the knife, ' cried Elise from the gate. 'Be quick!'

He pushed the papers back and joined her. The day was already hot, and they hurried along the burning street into the shade of theforest. Once in the Bas Breau Elise was not long in finding asubject, fell upon a promising one indeed almost at once, and wassoon at work. This time there were to be no figures, unless indeedit might be a dim pair of woodcutters in the middle distance, andthe whole picture was to be an impressionist dream of early summer, finished entirely out of doors, as rapidly and cleanly as possible. David lay on the ground under the blasted oak and watched her, asshe sat on her camp-stool, bending forward, looking now up, nowdown, using her charcoal in bold energetic strokes, her lipcompressed, her brow knit over some point of composition. Thelittle figure in its pink cotton was so daintily pretty, so full ofinterest and wilful charm, it might well have filled a lover's eyeand chained his thoughts. But David was restless and at timesabsent. 

'Tell me what you know of that man Montjoie?' he asked her at last, abruptly. 'I know you disliked him. '

She paused, astonished. 

'Why do you ask? Dislike--I _detest and despise_ him. I toldyou so. '

'But what do you know of him?' he persisted. 

'No good!' she said quickly, going back to her work. Then a lightbroke upon her, and she turned on her stool, her two hands on herknees. 

'_Tiens!_--you are thinking of your sister. You have had newsof her?'

A conscious half-remorseful look rose into her face. 

'No, I have had no news. I ought to have had a letter. I wrote, youremember, that first day here. Perhaps Louie has gone home already, 'he said, with constraint. 'Tell me anyway what you know. '

'Oh, he!--well, there is only one word for him--he is a_brute_ I' said Elise, drawing vigorously, her colour rising. 'Any woman will tell you that. Oh, he has plenty of talent, --hemight be anything. Carpeaux took him up at one time, got himcommissions. Five or six years ago there was quite a noise abouthim for two or three Salons. Then people began to drop him. Ibelieve he was the most mean, ungrateful animal towards those whohad been kind to him. He drinks besides--he is over head and earsin debt, always wanting money, borrowing here and there, thenlocking his door for weeks, making believe to be out of town--onlygoing out at night. As for his ways with women'--she shrugged hershoulders--'Was your sister still sitting to him when we left, orwas it at an end? Hasn't your sister been sitting to him for hisstatue?'

She paused again and studied him with her shrewd, bright eyes. 

He coloured angrily. 

'I believe so--I tried to stop it--it was no use. '

She laughed out. 

'No--I imagine she does what she wants to do. Well, we all do, _mon ami!_ After all'--and she shrugged her shoulders again--'I suppose she can do what I did?'

''What _you_ did!'

She went on drawing in sharp deliberate strokes; her breath camefast. 

'He met me on the stairs one night--it was just after I had takenthe _atelier_. I knew no one in the house--I was quite defencelessthere. He insulted me--I had a little walking-stick in my hand, my cousin had given me--I struck him with it across the face twice, three times--if you look close you will see the mark. You mayimagine he tells fine stories of me when he gets the chance. _Oh! je m'en fiche!_'

The scorn of the last gesture was unmeasured. 

'_Canaille!_' said David, between his teeth. 'If you had toldme this!'

Her expression changed and softened. 

'You asked me no questions after that quarrel we had in the Louvre, 'she said, excusing herself. 'You will understand it is not areminiscence one is exactly proud of; I did speak to Madame Cervinonce--'

David said nothing, but sat staring before him into the far vistasof the wood. It seemed strange that so great a smart and fear ashad possessed him since yesterday, should allow of any lesser smartwithin or near it. Yet that scrap of tremulous writing weighedheavy. _Where_ was Louie; why had she not written? So far hehad turned impatiently away from the thought of her, reiteratingthat he had done his best, that she had chosen her own path. Now inthis fragrant quiet of the forest the quick vision of someirretrievable wreck presented itself to him; he thought of Mr. Ancrum--of John--and a cold shudder ran through him. In it spokethe conscience of a lifetime. 

Elise meanwhile laid aside her charcoal, began to dash in somepaint, drew back presently to look at it from a distance, and then, glancing aside, suddenly threw down her brushes, and ran up toDavid. 

She sat down beside him, and with a coaxing, childish gesture, drewhis arm about her. 

'_Tu me fais pitie, mon ami!_' she said, looking up into hisface. 'Is it your sister? Go and find her--I will wait for you. '

He turned upon her, his black eyes all passion, his lips strugglingwith speech. 

'My place is here, ' he said. 'My life is here!'

Then, as she was silent, not knowing in her agitation what to say, he broke out:

'What was in your mind yesterday, Elise? what is there to-day?There is something--something I _will_ know. '

She was frightened by his look. Never did fear and grief speak moreplainly from a human face. The great deep within had broken up. 

'I was sorry, ' she said, trembling, 'sorry to have hurt you. Iwanted to make up. '

He flung her hand away from him with an impatient gesture. 

'There was more than that!' he said violently; 'will you be like allthe rest--betray me without a sign?'

'David!'

She bit her lip proudly. Then the tears welled up into her greyeyes, and she looked round at him--hesitated--began and stoppedagain--then broke into irrevocable confession. 

'David!--Monsieur David!--how can it go on? _Voyons_--I saidto myself yesterday--I am torturing him and myself--I cannot makehim happy--it is not in me--not in my destiny. It must end--itmust, --it _must_, for both our sakes. But then first, --first--'

'Be quiet!' he said, laying an iron hand on her arm. 'I knew it all. '

And he turned away from her, covering his face. 

This time she made no attempt to caress him. She clasped her handsround her knees and remained quite still, gazing--yet seeingnothing--into the green depths which five minutes before had beento her a torturing ecstasy of colour and light. The tears which hadbeen gathering fell, the delicate lip quivered. 

Struck by her silence at last, he looked up--watched her amoment--then he dragged himself up to her and knelt beside her. 

'Have I made you so miserable?' he said, under his breath. 

'It is--it is--the irreparableness of it all, ' she answered, halfsobbing. 'No undoing it ever, and how a woman glides into it, howlightly, knowing so little!--thinking herself so wise! And if shehas deceived herself, if she is not made for love, if she has givenherself for so little--for an illusion--for a dream that breaks andmust break--how dare the _man_ reproach her, after all?'

She raised her burning eyes to him. The resentment in them seemedto be more than individual, it was the resentment of the woman, ofher sex. 

She stabbed him to the heart by what she said--by what she leftunsaid. He took her little cold hand, put it to his lips--tried tospeak. 

'Don't, ' she said, drawing it away and hiding her face on herknees. 'Don't say anything. It is not you, it is God and Nature thatI accuse. '

Strange, bitter word!--word of revolt! He lay on his face besideher for many minutes afterwards, tasting the bitterness of it, revolving those other words she had said--_'an illusion--a dreamthat breaks--must break. '_ Then he made a last effort. He cameclose to her, laid his arm timidly round her shoulders, bent hischeek to hers. 

'Elise, listen to me a little. You say the debt is on my side--thatis true--true--a thousand times true! I only ask you, _implore_ you, to let me pay it. Let it be as you please--on what terms youplease--servant or lover. All I pray for is to pay that debt, with my life, my heart. '

She shook her head softly, her face still hidden. 

'When I am with you, ' she said, as though the words were wrung outof her, 'I must be a woman. You agitate me, you divide my mind, andmy force goes. There are both capacities in me, and one destroysthe other. And I want--I _want_ my art!'

She threw back her head with a superb gesture. But he did notflinch. 

'You shall have it, ' he said passionately, 'have it abundantly. Doyou think I want to keep you for ever loitering here? Do you thinkI don't know what ambition and will mean? that I am only fit forkissing?'

He stopped almost with a smile, thinking of that harsh struggle toknow and to have, in which his youth had been so far consumed nightand day. Then words rushed upon him again, and he went on with agrowing power and freedom. 

'I never looked at a woman till I saw you!--never had a whim, acaprice. I have eaten my heart out with the struggle first forbread, then for knowledge. But when you came across me, then theworld was all made new, and I became a new creature, your creature. '

He touched her face with a quick, tender hand, laid it against hisbreast, and spoke so, bending piteously down to her, within reachof her quivering mouth, her moist eyes:--

'Tell me this, Elise--answer me this! How can there be great art, great knowledge, only from the brain, --without passion, withoutexperience? You and I have been _living_ what Musset, whatHugo, what Shakespeare wrote, ' and he struck the little volume ofMusset beside him. 'Is not that worth a summer month? not worth theartist's while? But it is nearly gone. You can't wonder that Icount the moments of it like a miser! I have had a _hard_life, and this has transfigured it. Whatever happens now in time oreternity, this month is to the good--for me and for you, Elise!--yes, for you, too! But when it is over, --see if I hold you back!We will work together--climb--wrestle, together. And on what termsyou please, --mind that, --only dictate them. I deny your "illusion, "your "dream that breaks. " You _have_ been happy! I dare totell you so. But part now, --shirk our common destiny, --and you willindeed have given all for nothing, while I--'

His voice sank. She shook her head again, but as she drew herselfgently away she was stabbed by the haggardness of the countenance, the pleading pathos of the eyes. His gust of speech had shaken hertoo--revealed new points in him. She bent forward quickly and laidher soft lips to his, for one light swift moment. 

'Poor boy!' she murmured, 'poor poet!'

'Ah, that was enough!' he said, the colour flooding his cheeks. 'That healed--that made all good. Will you hide nothing from me, Elise--will you promise?'

'Anything, ' she said with a curious accent, 'anything--if you willbut let me paint. '

He sprang up, and put her things in order for her. They stoodlooking at the sketch, neither seeing much of it. 

'I must have some more cobalt, ' she said wearily, 'Look, my tube isnearly done. '

Yes, that was certain. He must get some more for her. Where couldit be got? No nearer than Fontainebleau, alas! where there was ashop which provided all the artists of the neighbourhood. He waseagerly ready to go--it would take him no time. 

'It will take you between two and three hours, sir, in this heat. But oh, I am so tired, I will just creep into the fern there whileyou are away, and go to sleep. Give me that book and that shawl. '

He made a place for her between the spurs of a great oak-root, tearing the brambles away. She nestled into it, with a sigh ofsatisfaction. 'Divine! Take your food--I want nothing but the airand sleep. _Adieu, adieu!_'

He stood gazing down upon her, his face all tender lingering andremorse. How white she was, how fragile, how shaken by this stormof feeling he had forced upon her! How could he leave her?

But she waved him away impatiently, and he went at last, goingfirst back to the village to fetch his purse which was not in hispocket. 

As he came out of their little garden gate, turning again towardsthe forest which he must cross in order to get to Fontainebleau, hebecame aware of a group of men standing in front of the inn. Two ofthem were the landscape artists already slightly known to him, whosaluted him as he came near. The other was a tall fine-looking man, with longish grizzled hair, a dark commanding eye, the rosette ofthe Legion of Honour at his buttonhole, and a general look ofirritable power. He wore a wide straw hat and holland overcoat, andbeside him on the bench lay some artist's paraphernalia. 

All three eyed David as he passed, and he was no sooner a few yardsaway than they were looking after him and talking, the new-comerasking questions, the others replying. 

'Oh, it is she!' said the stranger impatiently, throwing away hiscigar. 'Auguste's description leaves me no doubt of it, and thewoman at the house in the Rue Chantal where I had the caprice toinquire one day, when she had been three weeks away, told me theywere here. It is annoying. Something might have been made of her. Now it is finished. A handsome lad all the same!--of a rare type. _Non!--je me suis trompe--en devenant femme, elle n'a pas cessed'etre artiste!_'

The others laughed. Then they all took up their various equipments, and strolled off smoking to the forest. The man from Paris wasengaged upon a large historical canvas representing an incidentin the life of Diane de Poitiers. The incident had Diane's forestfor a setting, but his trees did not satisfy him, he had come downto make a few fresh studies on the spot. 

David walked his four miles to Fontainebleau, bought his cobalt, and set his face homewards about three o'clock. When he was halfwayhome, he turned aside into a tangle of young beech wood, parted thebranches, and found a shady corner where he could rest and think. The sun was very hot, the high road was scorched by it. But it wasnot heat or fatigue that had made him pause. 

So far he had walked in a tumult of conflicting ideas, emotions, terrors, torn now by this memory, now by that--his mind traversedby one project after another. But now that he was so near tomeeting her again, though he pined for her, he suddenly andpitifully felt the need for some greater firmness of mind and will. Let him pause and think! Where _was_ he with her?--what werehis real, tangible hopes and fears? Life and death depended for himon these days--these few vanishing days. And he was like one of thelast year's leaves before him, whirled helpless and will-less inthe dust-storm of the road!

He had sat there an unnoticed time when the sound of some heavycarriage approaching roused him. From his green covert he could seeall that passed, and instinctively he looked up. It was theBarbizon _diligence_ going in to meet the five o'clock trainat Fontainebleau, a train which in these lengthening days veryoften brought guests to the inn. The _correspondance_ had beenonly begun during the last week, and to the dwellers at Barbizonthe afternoon _diligence_ had still the interest of novelty. With the perception of habit David noticed that there was no oneoutside; but though the rough blinds were most of them drawn downhe thought he perceived some one inside--a lady. Strange thatanyone should prefer the stifling _interieur_ who could mountbeside the driver with a parasol!

The omnibus clattered past, and with the renewal of the woodlandsilence his mind plunged heavily once more into the agonisedbalancing of hope and fear. But in the end he sprang up with arenewed alertness of eye and step. 

_Despair?_ Impossible!--so long as one had one's love still inone's arms--could still plead one's cause, hand to hand, lip tolip. He strode homewards--running sometimes--the phrases of a newand richer eloquence crowding to his lips. 

About a mile from Barbizon, the path to the Bas Breau diverges tothe right. He sped along it, leaping the brambles in his path. Soonhe was on the edge of the great avenue itself, looking across itfor that spot of colour among the green made by her light dress. 

But there was no dress, and as he came up to the tree where he hadleft her, he saw to his stupefaction that there was no onethere--nothing, no sign of her but the bracken and brambles he hadbeaten down for her some three hours before, and the trodden grasswhere her easel had been. Something showed on the ground. Hestooped and noticed the empty cobalt-tube of the morning. 

Of course she had grown tired of waiting and had gone home. But agreat terror seized him. He turned and ran along the path they hadtraversed in the morning making for the road; past the inn whichseemed to have been struck to sleep by the sun, past Millet'sstudio on the left, to the little overgrown door in the brick wall. 

No one in the garden, no one in the little _salon_, no one upstairs;Madame Pyat was away for the day, nursing a daughter-in-law. In allthe house and garden there was not a sound or sign of life but thecat asleep on the stone step of the kitchen, and the bees hummingin the acacias. 

'Elise!' he called, inside and out, knowing already, poor fellow, in his wild despair that there could be no answer--that all wasover. 

But there was an answer. Elise was no untaught heroine. She playedher part through. There was her letter, propped up against the giltclock on the sham marble _cheminee_. 

He found it and tore it open. 

'You will curse me, but after a time you will forgive. I_could_ not go on. Taranne found me in the forest, just halfan hour after you left me. I looked up and saw him coming acrossthe grass. He did not see me at first, he was looking about for asubject. I would have escaped, but there was no way. Then at lasthe saw me. He did not attack me, he did not persuade me, he onlytook for granted it was all over, --my Art! I must know best, ofcourse; but he was sorry, for I had a gift. Had I seen the noticeof my portrait in the "Temps, " or the little mention in the "Figaro"?Oh, yes, Breal had been very successful, and deserved to be. Itwas a brave soul, devoted to art, and art had rewarded her. 

'Then I showed him my sketch, trembling--to stop his talk--everyword he said stabbed me. And he shrugged his shoulders quickly;then, as though recollecting himself, he put on a civil face all ina moment, and paid me compliments. To an amateur he is alwayscivil. I was all white and shaking by this time. He turned to goaway, and then I broke down. I burst into tears--I said I wascoming back to the _atelier_--what did he mean by taking sucha cruel, such an insolent tone with me? He would not be moved fromhis polite manner. He said he was glad to hear it; mademoisellewould be welcome; but just as though we were complete strangers. _He_ who has befriended me, and taught me, and scolded mesince I was fourteen! I could not bear it. I caught him by the arm. I told him he _should_ tell me all he thought. Had I reallytalent?--a future?

'Then he broke out in a torrent--he made me afraid of him--yet Iadored him! He said I had more talent than any other pupil he hadever had; that I had been his hope and interest for six years; thathe had taught me for nothing--befriended me--worked for me, behindthe scenes, at the Salon; and all because he knew that I must rise, must win myself a name, that when I had got the necessary techniqueI should make one of the poetical impressionist painters, who arein the movement, who sway the public taste. But I must give_all_ myself--my days and nights--my thoughts, and brain, andnerves. Other people might have adventures and paint the better. Not I, --I was too highly strung--for me it was ruin. _"C'est unmaitre sevire--l'Art, _" he said, looking like a god. "_ Aveccelui-la on ne transige pas. Ah! Dieu, je le connais, moi!_" Idon't know what he meant; but there has been a tragedy in his life;all the world knows that. 

'Then suddenly he took another tone, called me _pauvreenfant_, and apologised. Why should I be disturbed? I had chosenfor my own happiness, no doubt. What was fame or the high steeps ofart compared even with an _amour de jeunesse?_ He had seenyou, he said, --_une tote superbe--des epaules de lion!_ I wasa woman; a young handsome lover was worth more to me, naturally, than the drudgeries of art. A few years hence, when the pulse wascalmer, it might have been all very well. Well! I must forgive him;he was my old friend. Then he wrung my hand, and left me. 

'Oh, David, David, I must go! I _must. _ My life is imprisonedhere with you--it beats its bars. Why did I ever let you persuademe--move me? And I should let you do it again. When you are there Iam weak. I am no cruel adventuress, I can't look at you and tortureyou. But what I feel for you is not love--no, no, it is not, poorboy! Who was it said "A love which can be tamed is no love"? But inthree days--a week--mine had grown tame--it had no fears left. I amolder than you, not in years, _mais dans l'ame_--there is whatparts us. 

'Oh! I must go--and you must not try to find me. I shall be quitesafe, but with people you know nothing about. I shall write toMadame Pyat for my things. You need have no trouble. 

'Very likely I shall pass you on the way, for if I hurry I cancatch the _diligence_. But you will not see me. Oh, David, Iput my arms round you! I press my face against you. I ask you toforgive me, to forget me, to work out your own life as I work outmine. It will soon be a dream--this little house--these summerdays! I have kissed the chair you sat in last night, the book youread to me. _C'est deja fini! Adieu! adieu!'_

He sat for long in a sort of stupor. Then that maddening thoughtseized him, stung him into life, that she had actually passed him, that he had seen her, not knowing. That little indistinct figure inthe _interieur_, that was she. 

He sprang up, in a blind anguish. Pursuit! the _diligence_ wasslow, the trains doubtful, he might overtake her yet. He dashedinto the street, and into the Fontainebleau road. After he had runnearly a mile, he plunged into a path which he believed was a shortcut. It led through a young and dense oak wood. He rushed on, seeing nothing, bruising himself and stumbling. At last aprojecting branch struck him violently on the temple. He staggered, put up a feeble hand, sank on the grass against a trunk, andfainted. 

CHAPTER X

It was between five and six o'clock in the morning. In theTuileries Gardens flowers, grass, and trees were drenched in dew, the great shadow of the Palace spread grey and cool over terracesand slopes, while beyond the young sun had already shaken off allcumbering mists, and was pouring from a cloudless sky over theriver with its barges and swimming-baths, over the bridges and thequays, and the vast courts and facades of the Louvre. Yet among thetrees the air was still exquisitely fresh, the sun still a friendto be welcomed. The light morning wind swept the open, desertedspaces of the Gardens, playing merrily with the dust, the leaves, the fountains. Meanwhile on all sides the stir of the city wasbeginning, mounting slowly and steadily like a swelling tone. 

On a bench under one of the trees in the Champs-Elysees sat a youngman asleep. He had thrown himself against the back of the bench, his cheek resting on the iron, one hand on his knee. It was DavidGrieve; the lad's look showed that his misery was still with him, even in sleep. 

He was dreaming, letting fall here and there a troubled anddisconnected word. In his dream he was far from Paris--walkingafter his sheep among the heathery slopes of the Scout, climbingtowards the grey smithy among the old mill-stones, watching the RedBrook slide by over its long, shallow steps of orange grit, and theDownfall oozing and trickling among its tumbled blocks. Who wasthat hanging so high above the ravine on that treacherous stonethat rocked with the least touch? Louie--mad girl!--come back. Ah!too late--the stone rocks, falls; he leaps from block to block, only to see the light dress disappear into the stony gulf below. Hecries--struggles--wakes. 

He sat up, wrestling with himself, trying to clear his torpidbrain. Where was he? His dream-self was still roaming the Scout;his outer eye was bewildered by these alleys, these orange-trees, these statues--that distant arch. 

Then the hideous, undefined cloud that was on him took shape. Elisehad left him. And Louie, too, was gone--he knew not where, savethat it was to ruin. When he had arrived the night before at thehouse in the Rue Chantal, Madame Merichat could tell him nothing ofMademoiselle Delaunay, who had not been heard of. Then he asked, his voice dying in his throat before the woman's hard and cynicalstare--the stare of one who found the chief savour of life in themisfortunes of her kind--he asked for his sister and the Cervins. The Cervins were staying at Sevres with relations, and wereexpected home again in a day or two; Mademoiselle Louie?--well, Mademoiselle Louie was not with them. Had she gone back toEngland? _Mais non!_ A trunk of hers was still in the Cervins'vestibule. Did Madame Merichat know anything about her? the ladasked, forcing himself to it, his blanched face turned away. Thenthe woman shrugged her shoulders and spoke out. 

If he really must know, she thought there was no doubt at allthat where Monsieur Montjoie was, Mademoiselle Louie was too. Monsieur Montjoie had paid the arrears of his rent to the_proprietaire_, somehow or other, and had then made a midnightflitting of it so as to escape other creditors who were tired ofwaiting for his statue to be finished. He had got a furniture vanthere at night, and he and the driver and her husband between themhad packed most of the things from the studio, and M. Montjoie hadgone off in the van about one o'clock in the morning. But of courseshe did not know his address! she said so half-a-dozen times a dayto the persons who called, and it was as true as gospel. Why, indeed, should M. Montjoie let her or anyone else know, that hecould help? He had gone into hiding to keep honest people out oftheir money--that was what it meant. 

Well, and the same evening Mademoiselle Louie also disappeared. Madame Cervin had been in a great way, but she and mademoiselle hadalready quarrelled violently, and madame declared that she had nofault in the matter and that no one could be held responsible forthe doings of such a minx. She believed that madame had written tomonsieur. Monsieur had never received it? Ah, well, that was notsurprising! No one could ever read madame's writing, though it madeher temper very bad to tell her so. 

Could he have Madame Cervin's address? Certainly. She wrote it outfor him. As to his old room?--no, he could not go back to it. 

Monsieur Dubois had lately come back, with some money apparently, for he had paid his _loyer_ just as the landlord was going toturn him out. But he was not at home. 

Then she looked her questioner up and down, with a cool, inhumancuriosity working in her small eyes. So M'selle Elise had thrownhim over already? That was sharp work! As for the rest of her news, her pessimism was interested in observing his demeanour under it. Certainly he did not seem to take it gaily; but what else did heexpect with his sister?--'_Je vous demande_!'

The young man dropped his head and went out, shrinking togetherinto the darkness. She called her husband to the door, and the twopeered after him into the lamp-lit street, dissecting him, hismistress, and his sister with knifelike tongues. 

David went away and walked up and down the streets, the quays, thebridges, hour after hour, feeling no fatigue, till suddenly, justas the dawn was coming on, he sank heavily on to the seat in theChamps-Elysees. The slip with Madame Cervin's address on it droppedunheeded from his relaxing hand. His nervous strength was gone, andhe had to sit and bear his anguish without the relief of frenziedmotion. 

Now, after his hour's sleep, he was somewhat revived, ready tostart again--to search again; but where? whither? _Somewhere_in this vast, sun-wrapped Paris was Elise, waking, perhaps, at thismoment and thinking of him with a smile and a tear. He _would_find her, come what would; he could not live without her!

Then into his wild passion of loss and desire there slipped againthat cold, creeping thought of Louie--ruined, body and soul--ruinedin this base and dangerous Paris, while he still carried in hisbreast that little scrap of scrawled paper! And why? Because he hadflung her to the wolves without a thought, that he and Elise mighttravel to their goal unchecked. '_My God_!'

The sense of some one near him made him look up. He saw a girlstopping near the seat whom in his frenzy he for an instant tookfor Louie. There was the same bold, defiant carriage, the sameblack hair and eyes. He half rose, with a cry. 

The girl gave a quick, coarse laugh. She had been hurrying acrossthe Avenue towards the nearest bridge when she saw him; now shecame up to him with a hideous jest. David saw her face full, caughtthe ghastly suggestions of it--its vice, its look of mortal illnesswrecking and blurring the cheap prettiness it had once possessed, and beneath all else the fierceness of the hunted creature. Hiswhole being rose in repulsion; he waved her away, and she went, still laughing. But his guilty mind went with her, making of herinfamy the prophecy and foretaste of another's. 

He hurried on again, and again had to rest for faintness' sake, while the furies returned upon him. It seemed as though everypasser-by were there only to scourge and torture him; or, rather, out of the moving spectacle of human life which began to flow pasthim with constantly increasing fulness, that strange selectivepoet-sense of his chose out the figures and incidents which boreupon his own story and worked into his own drama, passing by therest. A group of persons presently attracted him who had just comeapparently from the Rive Gauche, and were making for the RueRoyale. They consisted of a man, a woman, and a child. The childwas a tiny creature in a preposterous feathered hat as large asitself. It had just been put down to walk by its father, and wasdragging contentedly at its mother's hand, sucking a crust. The manhad a bag of tools on his shoulder and was clearly an artisan goingto work. His wife's face was turned to him and they were talkingfast, lingering a little in the sunshine like people who had a fewminutes to spare and were enjoying them. The man had the blanched, unwholesome look of the city workman who lives a sedentary life infoul air, and was, moreover, undersized and noways attractive, saveperhaps for the keen amused eyes with which he was listening to hiswife's chatter. The great bell of Notre-Dame chimed in thedistance. The man straightened himself at once, adjusted his bag oftools, and hurried off, nodding to his wife. 

She looked after him a minute, then turned and came slowly alongthe alley towards the bench where David sat, idly watching her. Theheat was growing steadily, the child was heavy on her hand, and shewas again clearly on the way to motherhood. The seat invited her, and she came up to it. 

She sat down, panting, and eyed her neighbour askance, detecting atonce how handsome he was, and how unshorn and haggard. Before heknew where he was, or how it had begun, they were talking. She hadno shyness of any sort, and, as it seemed to him, a motherly, half-contemptuous indulgence for his sex, as such, which fittedoddly with her young looks. Very soon she was asking him the mostdirect questions, which he had to parry as best he could. She madeout at once that he was a foreigner and in the book trade, and thenshe let him know by a passing expression or two that naturally sheunderstood why he was lounging there in that plight at that hour inthe morning. He had been keeping gay company, of course, and hadbut just emerged from some nocturnal orgie or other. And then sheshrugged her strong shoulders with a light, pitiful air, as thoughmarvelling once more for the thousandth time over the stupidity ofmen who would commit these idiocies, would waste their money andhealth in them, say what women would. 

Presently he discovered that she was giving him advice of differentkinds, counselling him above all to find a good wife who would workand save his wages for him. A decent marriage was in truth aneconomy, though young men would never believe it. 

David could only stare at her in return for her counsels. Thedifference between his place at that moment in the human comedy andhers was too great to be explained; it called only for silence or astammering commonplace or two. Yet for a few moments theneighbourhood of her and her child was pleasant to him. She had agood comely head, which was bare under the sun, a little shawlcrossed upon her ample bust, and a market-basket on her arm. Thechild was playing in the fine gravel at her feet, pausing every nowand then to study her mother's eye with a furtive gravity, whilethe hat fell back and made a still more fantastic combination thanbefore with the pensive little face. 

Presently, tired of her play, she came to stand by her mother'sknee, laying her head against it. 

'_Mon petit ange! que tu es gentille!_' said the mother in alow, rapid voice, pressing her hand on the child's cheek. Then, turning back to David, she chattered on about the profit and lossof married life. All that she said was steeped in prose--in theprose especially of sous and francs; she talked of rents, of theprice of food, of the state of wages in her husband's trade. Yetevery here and there came an exquisite word, a flash. It seemedthat she had been very ill with her first child. She did not mincematters much even with this young man, and David gathered that shehad not only been near dying, but that her illness had made a moralepoch in her life. She was laid by for three months; work was slackfor her husband; her own earnings, for she was a skilledembroideress working for a great linen-shop in the Rue Vivienne, were no longer forthcoming. Would her husband put up with it, withthe worries of the baby, and the _menage_, and the sick wife, and that sharp pinch of want into the bargain, from which duringtwo years she had completely protected him?

'I cried one day, ' she said simply; 'I said to him, "You're justsick of it, ain't you? Well, I'm going to die. Go and shift foryourself, and take the baby to the _Enfants Trouves. Alors--_"'

She paused, her homely face gently lit up from within. 'He is not aman of words--Jules. He told me to be quiet, called me _petitesotte_. "Haven't you slaved for two years?" he said. "Well, then, lie still, can't you?--_faut bien que chacun prenne sontour!_"'

She broke off, smiling and shaking her head. Then glancing roundupon her companion again, she resumed her motherly sermon. That wasthe good of being married; that there was some one to share the badtimes with, as well as the good. 

'But perhaps, ' she inquired briskly, 'you don't believe in beingmarried? You are for _l'union libre?_'

She spoke like one touching on a long familiar question--as much aquestion indeed of daily life and of her class as those othermatters of wages and food she had been discussing. 

A slow and painful red mounted into the Englishman's cheek. 

'I don't know, ' he said stupidly. 'And you?'

'No, no!' she said emphatically, twice, nodding her head. 'Oh, I wasbrought up that way. My father was a Red--an Anarchist--a great manamong them; he died last year. He said that liberty was everything. It made him mad when any of his friends accepted _l'unionlegale_--for him it was a treason. He never married my mother, though he was faithful to her all his life. But for me--' shepaused, shaking her head slowly. 'Well, I had an elder sister--thatsays everything. _Faut pas en parler;_ it makes melancholy, and one must keep up one's spirits when one is like this. It isthree years since she died; she was my father's favourite. Whenthey buried her--she died in the hospital--I sat down and thought alittle. It was abominable what she had suffered, and I said tomyself, "Why?"'

The child swayed backward against her knee, so absorbed was it inits thumb and the sky, and would have fallen but that she caught itwith her housewife's hand, being throughout mindful of itsslightest movement. 

'"Why?" I said. She was a good creature--a bit foolish perhaps, but she would have worked the shoes off her feet to please anybody. And they had treated her--but like a dog! It bursts one's heart tothink of it, and I said to myself, --_le mariage c'est lajustice!_ it is nothing but that. It is not what the priestssay--oh! not at all. But it strikes me like that--_c'est lajustice_; it is nothing but that!'

And she looked at him with the bright fixed eyes of one whosethoughts are beyond their own expressing. He interrupted her, wondering at the harsh rapidity of his own voice. 'But if it is thewoman who will be free?--who will have no bond?'

Her expression changed, became shrewd, inquisitive, personal. 

'Well, then!' she said with a shrug, and paused. 'It is because oneis ignorant, you see, or one is bad--_on peut toujours etre unecoquine!_ And one forgets--one thinks one can be always young, and love is all pleasure--and it is not true! one get old--andthere is the child--and one may die of it. '

She spoke with the utmost simplicity, yet with a certain intensity. Evidently she had a natural pride in her philosophy of life, asthough in a possession of one's own earning and elaborating. Shehad probably expressed it often before in much the same terms, andwith the same verbal hitches and gaps. 

The young fellow beside her rose hastily, and bade her good morning. She looked mildly surprised at such an abrupt departure, but shewas not offended. 

'Good day, citizen, ' she said, nodding to him. 'I disturb you?'

He muttered something and strode away. 

How much time had that wasted of his irrevocable day that was toset him on Elise's track once more! The first post had beendelivered by this time. Elise must either return to her studio orremove her possessions; anyhow, sooner or later the Merichats musthave information. And if they were forbidden to speak, well, thenthey must be bribed. 

That made him think of money, and in a sudden panic he turned asideinto a small street and examined his pockets. Nearly four napoleonsleft, after allowing for his debt to Madame Pyat, which must bepayed that day. Even in his sick, stunned state of the eveningbefore, when he was at last staggering on again, after his fall, tothe Fontainebleau station, he had remembered to stop a Barbizon manwhom he came across and give him a pencilled message for thedeserted madame. He had sent her the Tue Chantal address, therewould be a letter from her this morning. And he must put her on thewatch, too--Elise could not escape him long. 

But he must have more money. He looked out for a stationer's shop, went in and wrote a letter to John, which he posted at the nextpost-office. 

It was an incoherent scrawl, telling the lad to change the chequehe enclosed in Bank of England notes and send them to the RueChantal, care of Madame Merichat. He was not to expect him backjust yet, and was to say to any friend who might inquire that hewas still detained. 

That letter, with the momentary contact it involved with hisManchester life, brought down upon him again the thought of Louie. But this time he flung it from him with a fierce impatience. Hisbrain, indeed, was incapable of dealing with it. Remorse? rescue?there would be time enough for that by-and-by. Meanwhile--to findElise!

And for a week he spent the energies of every thought and everymoment on this mad pursuit. Of these days of nightmare he couldafterwards remember but a few detached incidents here and there. Herecollected patrols up and down the Rue Chantal; talks with MadameMerichat; the gleam in her eyes as he slipped his profitless bribesinto her hand; visits to Taranne's _atelier_, where the_concierge_ at last grew suspicious and reported the matterwithin; and finally an interview with the artist himself, fromwhich the English youth emerged no nearer to his end than before, and crushed under the humiliation of the great man's advice. Hecould vaguely recall the long pacings of the Louvre; the fixedscrutiny of face after face; vain chases; ignominious retreats; andall the wretched stages of that slow descent into a bottomlessdespair! At last there was a letter--the long-expected letter toMadame Merichat, directing the removal of Mademoiselle Delaunay'spossessions from the Rue Chantal. It was written by a certain M. Pimodan, who did not give his address, but who declared himselfauthorised by Mademoiselle Delaunay to remove her effects, andnamed a day when he would himself superintend the process andproduce his credentials. David passed the time after the arrival ofthis letter in a state of excitement which left him hardly masterof his actions. He had a room at the top of a wretched little hotelclose to the Nord station, but he hardly ate or slept. The noisesof Paris were agony to him night and day; he lived in a perpetualnausea of mind and body, hardly able at times to distinguishbetween the images of the brain and the impressions coming fromwithout. 

Before the day came, a note was brought to him from the RueChantal. It was from M. Pimodan, and requested an interview. 

'I should be glad to see you on Mademoiselle Delaunay's behalf. Will you meet me in the Garden of the Luxembourg in front of thecentral pavilion, at three o'clock to-morrow?

'GUSTAVE PIMODAN. '

Before the hour came David was already pacing up and down theblazing gravel in front of the Palace. When M. Pimodan came theEnglishman in an instant recognised the cousin--the lanky fellowwith the spectacles, who had injured his eyes by reading. 

As soon as he had established this identification--and the two menhad hardly exchanged half-a-dozen sentences before the flashinginward argument was complete--a feeling of enmity arose in hismind, so intense that he could hardly keep himself still, couldhardly bring his attention to bear on what he or his companion wassaying. He had been brought so low that, with anyone else, he musthave broken into appeals and entreaties. With this man--No!

As for M. Pimodan, the first sight of the young Englishman hadapparently wrought in him also some degree of nervous shock; forthe hand which held his cane fidgeted as he walked. He had the airof a person, too, who had lately gone through mental struggle; thered rims of the eyes under their large spectacles might be dueeither to chronic weakness or to recent sleeplessness. 

But however these things might be, he took a perfectly mild tone, in which David's sick and irritable sense instantly detected thenote of various offensive superiorities--the superiority of classand the superiority of age to begin with. He said in the firstplace that he was Mademoiselle Delaunay's relative, and that shehad commissioned him to act for her in this very delicate matter. She was well aware--had been aware from the first day--that she waswatched, and that M. Grieve was moving heaven and earth to discoverher whereabouts. She did not, however, intend to be discovered; lethim take that for granted. In her view all was over--their relationwas irrevocably at an end. She wished now to devote herself whollyand entirely to her art, without disturbance or distraction fromany other quarter whatever. Might he, under these circumstances, give M. Grieve the advice of a man of the world, and counsel him toregard the matter in the same light?

David walked blindly on, playing with his watch-chain. In the nameof God whom and what was this fellow talking about? At the end often minutes' discourse on M. Pimodan's part, and of a few raremonosyllables on his own, he said, straightening his young figurewith a nervous tremor:

'What you say is perfectly useless--I shall find her. '

Then a sudden angry light leapt into the cousin's eyes. 

'You will _not_ find her!' he said, drawing a sharp breath. 'Itshows how little you know her, after all--compared with--thosewho--No matter! Oh, you can persecute and annoy her! No one doubtsthat. You can stand between her and all that she now cares to livefor--her art. But you can do nothing else; and you will not beallowed to do that long, for she is not alone, as you seem tothink. She will be protected. There are resources, and we shallemploy them!'

The cousin had gone beyond his commission. David guessed as much. He did not believe that Elise had set this man on to threaten him. What a fool! But he merely said with a sarcastic dryness, endeavouring the while to steady his parched lips and his eyelidsswollen with weariness. 

'_A la bonne heure!_--employ them. Well, sir, you know, Ibelieve, where Mademoiselle Delaunay is. I wish to know. You willnot inform me. I therefore pursue my own way, and it is useless forme to detain you any longer. '

'Know where she is!' cried the other, a triumphant flash passingacross his sallow student's face; 'I have but just parted from her. '

But he stopped. As a physician, he was accustomed to notice thechanges of physiognomy. Instinctively he put some feet of distancebetween himself and his companion. Was it agony or rage he saw?

But David recovered himself by a strong effort. 

'Go and tell her, then, that I shall find her, ' he said with ashaking voice. 'I have many things to say to her yet. '

'Absurd!' cried the other angrily. 'Very well, sir, we know what toexpect. It only remains for us to take measures accordingly. '

And drawing himself up he walked quickly away, looking back everynow and then to see whether he were followed or no. 

'Supposing I did track him, ' thought David vaguely, 'what would hedo? Summon one of the various _gardiens_ in sight?'

He had, however, no such intention. What could it have ended in buta street scuffle? Patience! and he would find Elise for himself inspite of that prater. 

Meanwhile he descended the terrace, and threw himself, worn out, upon the first seat, to collect his thoughts again. 

Oh, this summer beauty:--this festal moment of the great city!Palace and Garden lay under the full June sun. The clipped trees onthe terraces, statues, alleys, and groves slept in the luminousdancing air. All the normal stir and movement of the Garden seemedto have passed to-day into the leaping and intermingling curves ofthe fountains; the few figures passing and repassing hardlydisturbed the general impression of heat and solitude. 

For hours David sat there, head down, his eyes on the gravel, hishands tightly clasped between his knees. When he rose at last itwas to hurry down the Rue de Seine and take the nearest bridge andstreet northwards to the Quartier Montmartre. He had been dreamingtoo long! and yet so great by now was his confusion of mind that hewas no nearer a fresh plan of operations than when the cousin lefthim. 

When he arrived at Madame Merichat's _loge_ it was to findthat no new development had occurred. Elise's possessions werestill untouched; neither she nor M. Pimodan had given any furthersign. The _concierge_, however, gave him a letter which hadjust arrived for him. Seeing that it bore the Manchester postmark, he thrust it into his pocket unread. 

When he entered the evil-smelling passage of his hotel, a_garcon_ emerged from the restaurant, dived into the _sallede lecture_, and came out with an envelope, which he gave to theEnglishman. It had been left by a messenger five minutes beforemonsieur arrived. David took it, a singing in his ears; mounted tothe first landing, where the gas burnt at midday, and read it. 

'Gustave tells me you would not listen to him. Do you want to makeme curse our meeting? Be a man and leave me to myself! While I knowthat you are on the watch I shall keep away from Paris--_voila, tout_. I shall eat my heart out, --I shall begin to hate you, --you will have chosen it so. Only understand this: I will_never_ see you again, for both our sakes, if I can help it. Believe what I say--believe that what parts us is a fate strongerthan either of us, and go! Oh! you men talk of love--and at bottomyou are all selfish and cruel. Do you want to break me more than Iam already broken? Set me free!--will you kill both my youth and myart together?'

He carefully refolded the letter and put it into its envelope. Thenhe turned and went downstairs again towards the street. But thesame frowsy waiter who had given him his letter was on the watchfor him. In the morning monsieur had commanded some dinner. Wouldhe take it now?

The man's tone was sulky. David understood that he was notconsidered a profitable customer of the hotel--that, consideringhis queer ways, late hours, and small spendings, they wouldprobably be glad to be rid of him. With a curious submission andshrinking he followed the man into the stifling restaurant and satdown at one of the tables. 

Here some food was brought to him, which he tried to eat. But inthe midst of it he was seized with so great a loathing, that hesuddenly rose, so violently as to upset a plate of bread besidehim, and make a waiter spring forward to save the table itself. Hepushed his way to the glass-door into the street, totallyunconscious of the stir his behaviour was causing among the stoutwomen in bonnets and the red-faced men with napkins tucked undertheir chins who were dining near, fumbled at the handle, andtottered out. 

'_Quel animal!_' said the enraged _dame du comptoir_, who had noticed the incident. 'Marie!'--this to the sickly girl whosat near with the books in front of her, 'enter that plate, andcharge it high. To-morrow I shall raise the price of his room. Onemust really finish with him. _C'est un fou!_'

Meanwhile David, revived somewhat by the air, was already in theBoulevard, making for Opera and the Rue Royale. It was not yetseven, the Salon would be still open. The distances seemed tohim interminable--the length of the Rue Royale, the expanseof the Place de la Concorde, the gay and crowded ways of theChamps-Elysee. But at last he was mounting the stairs and battlingthrough the rooms at the top. He looked first at the larger picturewhich had gained her _mention honorable_. It was a study offactory girls at their work, unequal, impatient, but full of a warminventive talent--full of _her_. He knew its history--thesmall difficulties and triumphs of it, the adventures she had gonethrough on behalf of it--by heart. That fair-haired girl in thecorner was studied from herself; the tint of the hair, the curve ofthe cheek were exact. He strained his eyes to look, searching forthis detail and that. His heart said farewell--that was the last, the nearest he should ever come to her on this earth! Next year?Ah, he would give much to see her pictures of next year, with thesenew perceptions she had created in him. 

He stood a minute before the other picture, the portrait--a studyfrom one of her comrades in the _atelier_--and then he woundhis way again through the thronged and suffocating rooms, and outinto the evening. 

The excessive heat of the last few days was about to end in storm. A wide tempestuous heaven lay beyond the Arc de Triomphe; the redlight struck down the great avenue and into the faces of thosestepping westwards. The deep shade under the full-leafed trees--howthinly green they were still against the sky that day when shevanished from him beside the arch and their love began!--was fullof loungers and of playing children; the carriages passed andrepassed in the light. So it had been, the enchanting never-endingdrama, before this spectator entered--so it would be when he haddeparted. 

He turned southwards and found himself presently on the Quai de laConference, hanging over the river in a quiet spot where few peoplepassed. 

His frenzy of will was gone, and his last hope with it. Elise hadconquered. Her letter had brought him face to face with thoserealities which, during this week of madness, he had simply refusedto see. He could pit himself against her no longer. When it came tothe point he had not the nerve to enter upon a degrading andignoble conflict, in which all that was to be won was her hatred orher fear. That, indeed, would be the last and worst ruin, for itwould be the ruin, not of happiness or of hope, but of love itself, and memory. 

He took out her letter and re-read it. Then he searched for some ofthe writing materials he had bought when he had written his lastletter to Manchester, and, spreading a sheet on the parapet of theriver wall, he wrote:

'Be content. I think now--I am sure--that we shall never meetagain. From this moment you will be troubled with me no more. OnlyI tell you for the last time that you have done ill--irrevocablyill. For what you have slain in yourself and me is not love orhappiness, but _life_ itself--the life of life!'

Foolish, incoherent words, as they seemed to him, but he could findno better. Confusedly and darkly they expressed the cry, the inmostconviction of his being. He could come no nearer at any rate tothat desolation at the heart of him. 

But now what next? Manchester?--the resumption and expansion of hisbookseller's life--the renewal of his old friendships--the pursuitof money and of knowledge?

No. That is all done. The paralysis of will is complete. He cannotdrive himself home, back to the old paths. The disgust with lifehas sunk too deep--the physical and moral collapse of which he isconscious has gone too far. 

_'Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body ofthis death?'_

There, deep in the fibre of memory lie these words, and others likethem--the typical words of a religion which is still in some sensethe ineradicable warp of his nature, as it had been for generationsof his forefathers. His individual resources of speech, as it were, have been overpassed; he falls back upon the inherited, thetraditional resources of his race. 

He looked up. A last gleam was on the Invalides--on the topmostroof of the Corps Legislatif; otherwise the opposite bank wasalready grey, the river lay in shade. But the upper air was stillaglow with the wide flame and splendour of the sunset; and beneath, on the bridges and the water and the buildings, how clear andgracious was the twilight!

_'Who shall deliver me?' 'Deliver thyself!'_ One instant, andthe intolerable pressure on this shrinking point of consciousnesscan be lightened, this hunger for sleep appeased! Nothing else ispossible--no future is even conceivable. His life in flowering hasexhausted and undone itself, so spendthrift has been the process. 

So he took his resolve. Then, already calmed, he hung over theriver, thinking, reviewing the past. 

Six weeks--six weeks only!--yet nothing in his life before mattersor counts by comparison. For this mood of deadly fatigue theremembrance of all the intellectual joys and conquests of the lastfew years has no savour whatever. Strange that the development ofone relation of life--the relation of passion--should have beenable so to absorb and squander the power of living! His fighting, enduring capacity, compared with that of other men, must be smallindeed. He thinks of himself as a coward and a weakling. Butneither the facts of the present nor the face of the future arealtered thereby. 

_The relation of sex_--in its different phases--as he sees theworld at this moment, there is no other reality. The vile andhideous phase of it has been present to him from the first momentof his arrival in these Paris streets. He thinks of the picturesand songs at the 'Trois Rats' from which in the first delicacy andflush of passion he had shrunk with so deep a loathing; of thephotographs and engravings in the shops and the books on thestalls; of some of those pictures he had passed, a few minutesbefore, in the Salon; of that girl's face in the Tuileries Gardens. The animal, the beast in human nature, never has it been so presentto him before; for he has understood and realised it while loathingit, has been admitted by his own passion to those regions of humanfeeling where all that is most foul and all that is most beautifulare generated alike from the elemental forces of life. And becausehe had loved Elise so finely and yet so humanly, with a boy'sfreshness and a man's energy, this animalism of the great city hadbeen to him a perpetual nightmare and horror. His whole heart hadgone into Regnault's cry--into Regnault's protest. For his ownenchanted island had seemed to him often in the days of his wooingto be but floating on the surface of a ghastly sea, whence emergedall conceivable shapes of ruin, mockery, terror, and disease. Itwas because of the tremulous adoration which filled him from thebeginning that the vice of Paris had struck him in this tragicalway. At another time it might have been indifferent to him, mighteven have engulfed him. 

But he!--he had known the best of passion! He laid his head down onthe wall, and lived Barbizon over again--day after day, night afternight. Now for the first time there is a pause in the urgingmadness of his despair. All the pulses of his being slacken; hedraws back as it were from his own fate, surveys it as a whole, separates himself from it. The various scenes of it succeed eachother in memory, set always--incomparably set--in the spring greenof the forest, or under a charmed moonlight, or amid the flowerydetail of a closed garden. Her little figure flashes beforehim--he sees her gesture, her smile; he hears his own voiceand hers; recalls the struggle to express, the poverty of words, the thrill of silence, and that perpetual and exquisite recurrenceto the interpreting images of poetry and art. But no poet hadimagined better, had divined more than they in those earliesthours had _lived_! So he had told her, so he insisted now witha desperate faith. 

But, poor soul! even as he insists, the agony within rises, breaksup, overwhelms the picture. He lives again through the jars andfrets of those few burning days, the growing mistrust of them, thesense of jealous terror and insecurity--and then through theanguish of desertion and loss. He writhes again under the wrenchingapart of their half-fused lives--under this intolerable ache of hisown wound. 

_This_ the best of passion! Why his whole soul is stillathirst and ahungered. Not a single craving of it has beensatisfied. What is killing him is the sense of a thwarted gift, abaffled faculty--the faculty of self-spending, self-surrender. This, the best?

Then the mind fell into a whirlwind of half-articulate debate, fromthe darkness of which emerged two scenes--fragments--set clear in apassing light of memory. 

That workman and his wife standing together before the day'stoil--the woman's contented smile as her look clung to the meandeparting figure. 

And far, far back in his boyish life--Margaret sitting beside 'Liasin the damp autumn dawn, spending on his dying weakness thatexquisite, ineffable passion of tenderness, of pity. 

Ah! from the very beginning he had been in love with loving. Hedrew the labouring breath of one who has staked his all for somelong-coveted gain, and lost. 

Well!--Mr. Ancrum may be right--the English Puritan may beright--'sin' and 'law' may have after all some of those mysteriousmeanings his young analysis had impetuously denied them--he andElise may have been only dashing themselves against the hard factsof the world's order, while they seemed to be transcending thecommon lot and spurning the common ways. What matter now! A certainimpatient defiance rises in his stricken soul. He has madeshipwreck of this one poor opportunity of life--confessed! now letthe God behind it punish, if God there be. _'The rest is silence. '_ With Elise in his arms, he had grasped at immortality. Now astubborn, everlasting 'Nay' possesses him. There is nothing beyond. 

He gathered up his letter, folded it, and put it into thebreast--pocket of his coat. But in doing so his fingers touchedonce more the ragged edges of a bit of frayed paper. 

_Louie!_

Through all these half-sane days and nights he had never oncethought of his sister. She had passed out of his life--she hadplayed no part even in the nightmares of his dreams. 

But now!--while that intense denial of any reality in the universebeyond and behind this masque of life and things was stillvibrating through his deepest being, it was as though a hand gentlydrew aside a curtain, and there grew clear before him, slowlyeffacing from his eyes the whole grandiose spectacle of buildings, sky, and river, that scene of the past which had worked so potentlyboth in his childish sense and in Reuben's maturer conscience--thebare room, the iron bed, the dying man, one child within his arm, the other a frightened baby beside him. 

It was frightfully clear, clearer than it had ever been inany normal state of brain, and as his mind lingered on it, unconsciously shaping, deepening its own creation, the weirdimpression grew that the helpless figure amid the bedclothes roseon its elbow, opened its cavernous eyes, and looked at him face toface, at the son whose childish heart had beat against his father'sto the last. The boy's tortured soul quailed afresh before thecurse his own remorse called into those eyes. 

He hung over the water pleading with the phantom--defendinghimself. Every now and then he found that he was speaking aloud;then he would look round with a quick, piteous terror to seewhether he had been heard or no, the parched lips beginning to moveagain almost before his fear was soothed. 

All his past returned upon him, with its obligations, its fettersof conscience and kinship, so slowly forged, so often resisted andforgotten, and yet so strong. The moment marked the first passingaway of the philtre, but it brought no recovery with it. 

_'My God! my God! I tried, father--I tried. But she is lost, lost--as I am!'_

Then a thought found entrance and developed. He walked up and downthe quay, wrestling it out, returning slowly and with enormousdifficulty, because of his physical state, to some of the normalestimates and relations of life. 

At last he dragged himself off towards his hotel. He must have somesleep, or how could these hours that yet remained be livedthrough--his scheme carried out?

On the way he went into a shop still open on the boulevard. When hecame out he thrust his purchase into his pocket, buttoned his coatover it, and pursued his way northwards with a brisker step. 

CHAPTER XI

Two days afterwards David stood at the door of a house in theoutskirts of the Auteuil district of Paris. The street had ahalf-finished, miscellaneous air; new buildings of the villa typewere mixed up with old and dingy houses standing in gardens, whichhad been evidently overtaken by the advancing stream of Paris, having once enjoyed a considerable amount of country air and space. 

It was at the garden gate of one of these older houses that Davidrang, looking about him the while at the mean irregular street andthe ill-kept side-walks with their heaps of cinders and refuse. 

A powerfully built woman appeared, scowling, in answer to the bell. At first she flatly refused the new-comer admission. But David wasprepared. He set to work to convince her that he was not a Pariscreditor, and, further, that he was well aware M. Montjoie was notat home, since he had passed him on the other side of the road, apparently hurrying to the railway station, only a few minutesbefore. He desired simply to see madame. At this the woman'sexpression changed somewhat. She showed, however, no immediatesigns of letting him in, being clearly chosen and paid to be awatch-dog. Then David brusquely put his hand in his pocket. Somehowhe must get this harridan out of the way at once! The same terrorwas upon him that had been upon him now for many days andnights--of losing command of himself, of being no more able to dowhat he had to do. 

The creature studied him, put out a greedy palm, developed a smilestill more repellent than her brutality, and let him in. 

He found himself in a small, neglected garden; in front of him, tothe right, a wretched, weather-stained house, bearing every mark ofpoverty and dilapidation, while to the left there stretched outfrom the house a long glass structure, also in miserablecondition--a sculptor's studio, as he guessed. 

His guide led him to the studio-door. Madame was there a fewminutes ago. As they approached, David stopped. 

'I will knock. You may go back to the house. I am madame's brother. '

She looked at him once more, reluctant. Then, in the clearer lightof the garden, the likeness of the face to one she already knewstruck her with amazement; she turned and went off, muttering. 

David knocked at the door; there was a movement within, and it wascautiously opened. 

'_Monsieur est sorti. _--You!'

The brother and sister were face to face. 

David closed the door behind him, and Louie retreated slowly, herhands behind her, her tall figure drawing itself up, her facesetting into a frowning scorn. 

'_You!_--what are you here for? We have done with each other!'

For answer David went up to a stove which was feebly burning in thedamp, cheerless place, put down his hat and stick, and bent overit, stretching out his hands to the warmth. A chair was beside it, and on the chair some scattered bits of silk and velvet, out ofwhich Louie was apparently fashioning a hat. 

She stood still, observing him. She was in a loose dress of somesilky Oriental material, and on her black hair she wore a redclose-fitting cap with a fringe of golden coins dropping lightlyand richly round her superb head and face. 

'What is the matter with you?' she asked him grimly, after aminute's silence. ' She has left you--that's plain!'

The young man involuntarily threw back his head as though he hadbeen struck, and a vivid colour rushed into his cheek. But heanswered quickly:

'We need not discuss my affairs. I did not come here to speak ofthem. They are beyond mending. I came to see--before I go--whetherthere is anything I can do to help you. '

'Much obliged to you!' she cried, flinging herself down on the edgeof a rough board platform, whereon stood a fresh and vigorousclay-study, for which she had just been posing, to judge from herdress. Beyond was the Maenad. And in the distance loomed a greatblock of marble, upon which masons had been working that afternoon. 

'I am _greatly_ obliged to you!' she repeated mockingly, taking the crouching attitude of an animal ready to attack. 'You area pattern brother. '

Her glowing looks expressed the enmity and contempt she was at themoment too excited to put into words. 

David drew his hand across his eyes with a long breath. How was heto get through it, this task of his, with this swollen, achingbrain and these trembling limbs? Louie _must_ let him speak;he bitterly felt his physical impotence to wrestle with her. 

He went up to her slowly and sat down beside her. She drew awayfrom him with a violent movement. But he laid his hand upon herknee--a shaking hand which his impatient will tried in vain tosteady. 

'Louie, look at me!' he commanded. 

She did so unwillingly, but the proud repulsion of her lip did notrelax. 

'Well, I dare say you look pretty bad. Whose fault is it? everybodyelse but you knew what the creature was worth. Ask anybody!'

The lad's frame straightened and steadied. He took his hand fromher knee. 

'Say that kind of thing again, ' he said calmly, 'and I walk straightout of that door, and you set eyes on me for the last time. Thatwould be what you want, I dare say. All I wish to point out is, that you would be a great fool. I have not come here today to wastewords, but to propose something to your advantage--yourmoney-advantage, ' he repeated deliberately, looking round thedismal building with its ill-mended gaps and rents, and itscomplete lack of the properties and appliances to which thehumblest modern artist pretends. 'To judge from what I heard inParis, and what I see, money is scarce here. '

His piteous sudden wish to soften her, to win a kind word from her, from anyone, had passed away. He was beginning to take command ofher as in the old days. 

'Well, maybe we are hard up, ' she admitted slowly. 'People are suchbrutes and won't wait, and a sculptor has to pay out for a lot ofthings before he can make anything at all. But that statue will putit all right, ' and she pointed behind her to the Maenad. 'It'sme--it's the one you tried to put a stopper on. '

She looked at him darkly defiant. She was leaning back on one arm, her foot beating with the trick familiar to her. For reckless andevil splendour the figure was unsurpassable. 

'When he sells that, ' she went on, seeing that he did not answer, 'and he will sell it in a jiffy--it is the best he's everdone--there'll be heaps of money. '

David smiled. 

'For a week perhaps. Then, if I understand this business aright--Ihave been doing my best, you perceive, to get information, and M. Montjoie seems to be better known than one supposed to halfParis--the game will begin again. '

'Never you mind, ' she broke in, breathing quickly. 'Give me mymoney--the money that belongs to me--and let me alone. '

'On one condition, ' he said quietly. 'That money, as you remember, is in my hands and at my disposal. '

'Ah! I supposed you would try to grab it!' she cried. 

Even he was astonished at her violence--her insolence. The demon inher had never been so plain, the woman never so effaced. His heartdropped within him like lead, and his whole being shrank from her. 

'Listen to me!' he said, seizing her strongly by the hand, while alight of wrath leapt into his changed and bloodshot eyes. 'This manwill desert you; in a year's time he will have tired of you;what'll you do then?'

'Manage for myself, thank you! without any canting interferencefrom you. I have had enough of that. '

'And fall again, ' he said, releasing her, and speaking with adeliberate intensity; 'fall again--from infamy to infamy!'

She sprang up. 

'Mind yourself!' she cried. 

Miserable moment! As he looked at her he felt that that weapon ofhis old influence with her which, poor as it was, he had relied onin the last resort all his life, had broken in his hand. His ownact had robbed it of all virtue. That pang of 'irreparableness'which had smitten Elise smote him now. All was undone--all wasdone!

He buried his face in his hands an instant. When he lifted itagain, she was standing with her arms folded across her chest, leaning against an iron shaft which supported part of the roof. 

'You had better go!' she said, still in a white heat. 'Why you evercame I don't know. If you won't give me that money, I shall get itsomehow. '

Suddenly, as she spoke, everything--the situation, the subject oftheir talk, the past--seemed to be wiped out of David's brain. Hestared round him helplessly. Why were they there--what hadhappened?

This blankness lasted a certain number of seconds. Then it passedaway, and he painfully recovered his identity. But the experiencewas not new to him--it would recur--let him be quick. 

This time a happier instinct served him. He, too, rose and went upto her. 

'We are a pair of fools, ' he said to her, half bitterly, halfgently; 'we reproach and revile each other, and all the time I amcome to give you not only what is yours, but all--all I have--thatit may stand between you and--and worse ruin. '

'Ruin!' she said, throwing back her head and catching at the word;'speak for yourself! If I am Montjoie's mistress, Elise Delaunaywas yours. Don't preach. It won't go down. '

'I have no intention of preaching--don't alarm yourself, ' hereplied quietly, this time controlling himself without difficulty. '

'I have only this to say. On the day when you become Montjoie'swife, all our father's money--all the six hundred pounds Mr. Gurneypaid over to me in January, shall be paid to you. '

She started, caught her breath, tried to brazen it out. 

'What is this idiocy for?' she asked coldly. 'What does marryingmatter to you?'

He sank down again on the chair by the stove, being, indeed, unableto stand. 

'Perhaps I can't tell you, ' he said, after a pause, shading hisface from her with his hand; 'perhaps I could not make plain tomyself what I feel. But this I know--that this man with whom youare living here is a man for whom nobody has a good word. I want togive you a hold over him. But first--stop a moment, '--he droppedhis hand and looked up eagerly, 'will you leave him--leave him atonce? I could arrange that. '

'Make your mind easy, ' she said shortly; 'he suits me--I stay. Iwent with him, well, because I was dull--and because I wanted tomake you smart for it, if you're keen to know!--but if you think Iam anxious to go home, to be cried over by Dora and lectured byyou, you're vastly mistaken. I can manage him! I have my hold onhim--he knows very well what I am worth to him. '

She threw her head back superbly against the iron shaft, puttingone arm round it and resting her hot cheek against it as though forcoolness. 

'Why should we argue?' he said sharply--after a wretched silence. 'I didn't come for that. If you won't leave him I have only this tosay. On the day he marries you, if the evidence of the marriage issatisfactory to an English lawyer I have discovered in Paris andwhose address I will give you, six hundred pounds will be paid overto you. It is there now, in the lawyer's hands. If not, I go home, and the law does not compel me to hand you over one farthing. '

She was silent, and began to pace up and down. 

'Montjoie despises marriage, ' she said presently. 

'Try whether he despises money too, ' said David, and could not forthe life of him keep the sarcastic note out of his voice. 

She bit her lip. 

'And when, if it is done, must this precious thing be settled?'

'If your marriage does not take place within a month, Mr. O'Kelly--I will leave you his address, ' he put his hand into hispocket--'has orders to return the money--'

'To whom?' she inquired, struck by his sudden break. 

'To me, of course, ' he said slowly. 'Is it perfectly plain? do youunderstand? Now, then, listen. I have inquired what the law is--youwill have to be married both at the mairie and by the chaplain atthe British embassy. '

She stopped suddenly in her walk and confronted him. 

'If I am married at all, ' she said abruptly, 'I shall be married asa Catholic. '

'A Catholic!' David stared at her. She enjoyed his astonishment. 

'Oh, I have had that in my mind for a long time, ' she saidscornfully. 'There is a priest at that church with the steps, youknow, near that cemetery place on the hill, who is very muchinterested in me indeed. He speaks English. I used to go toconfession. Madame Cervin told me all about it, and how to do it; Idid it exact! Oh, if I am to be married, that will make it plainsailing enough. It was awkward--while--'

She broke off and sat down again beside him, pondering and smilingas he had seen her do in Manchester, when she had the prospect of anew dress or some amusement that excited her. 

'How have you been able to think about such things?' he asked her, marvelling. 

'Think about them! What was the good of that? It's the churches Ilike, and the priests. Now there _is_ something to see in theParis churches, like the Madeleine--worth a dozen St. Damian's, --you may tell Dora that. The flowers and the dresses and themusic--they _are_ something like. And the priests--'

She smiled again, little meditative smiles, as though she wererecalling her experiences. 

'Well, I don't know that there's much about them, ' she said atlast; 'they're queer, and they're awfully clever, and they want tomanage you, of course. '

She stopped, quite unable to express herself any more fully. But itwas evident that the traditional relation of the Catholic priest tohis penitent had been to her a subject of curiosity andexcitement--that she would gladly know more of it. 

David could hardly believe his ears. He sat lost at first in thepure surprise of it, in the sense of Louie's unlikeness to anyother human creature he had ever seen. Then a gleam of satisfactionarose. He had heard of the hold on women possessed by the CatholicChurch, and maintained by her marvellous, and on the wholeadmirable, system of direction. For himself, he would have nopriests of whatever Church. But his mind harboured none of thecommon Protestant rules and shibboleths. In God's name, let thepriests get hold of this sister of his:--if they could--when he--

'Marry this man, then!' he said to her at last, breaking the silenceabruptly, ' and square it with the Church, if you want to. '

'Oh, indeed!' she said mockingly. 'So you have nothing to sayagainst my turning Catholic? I should like to see Uncle Reuben'sface. '

Her voice had the exultant mischief of a child. It was evident thather spirits were rising, that her mood towards her brother wasbecoming more amiable. 

'Nothing, ' he said dryly, replying to her question. 

Then he got up and looked for his hat. She watched him askance. 'What are you going for? I could get you some tea. _He_ won'tbe in for hours. '

'I have said what I had to say. These'--taking a paper from hispocket and laying it down, 'are all the directions, legal and other, that concern you, as to the marriage. I drew them up this morning, with Mr. O'Kelly. I have given you his address. You can communicatewith him at any time. '

'I can write to you, I suppose?'

'Better write to him, ' he said quietly, 'he has instructions. Heseemed to me a good sort. '

'Where are you going?'

'Back to Paris, and then--home. '

She placed herself in his way, so that the sunny light of the lateafternoon, coming mostly from behind her, left her face in shadow. 

'What'll you do without that money?' she asked abruptly. 

He paused, getting together his answer with difficulty. 

'I have the stock, and there is something left of the sixty poundsUncle Reuben brought. I shall do. '

'He'll muddle it all, ' she said roughly. 'What's the good?'

And she folded her arms across her with the recklessness of onequite ready and eager, if need be, to fight her own battle, withher own weapons, in her own way. 

'Get Mr. O'Kelly to keep it, if you can persuade him, and draw itby degrees. I'd have made a trust of it, if it had been enough; butit isn't. Twenty-four pounds a year: that's all you'd get, if wetied up the capital. '

She laughed. Evidently her acquaintance with Montjoie had enlargedher notions of money, which were precise and acute enough before. 

'He spends that in a supper when he's in cash. I'll be curious tosee whether, all in a lump, it'll be enough to make him marry me. Still, he is precious hard up: he don't stir out till dark, he's soafraid of meeting people. '

'That's my hope, ' said David heavily, hardly knowing what he said. 'Good-bye. '

'Hope!' she re-echoed bitterly. 'What d'you want to tie me to himfor, for good and all?'

And, turning away from him, she stared, frowning, through the dingyglass door in to the darkening garden. In her mind there was oncemore that strange uprising swell of reaction--of hatred of herselfand life. 

Why, indeed? David could not have answered her question. He onlyknew that there was a blind instinct in him driving him to this, asthe best that remained open--the only _ainde_ possible forwhat had been so vilely done by himself, by her, and by the man whohad worked out her fall for a mere vicious whim. There was no wordin any mouth, it seemed to him, of his being in love with her. 

There were all sorts of whirling thoughts in his mind--fragmentscast up by the waves of desolate experience he had been passingthrough--inarticulate cries of warning, judgment, pain. But hecould put nothing into words. 

'Good-bye, Louie!'

She turned and stood looking at him. 

'What made you get ill?' she inquired, eyeing him. 

His thirsty heart drank in the change of tone. 

'I don't sleep, ' he said hurriedly. 'It's the noise. The Nordstation is never quiet. Well, mind you've got to bring that off. Keep the papers safe. Good-bye, for a long time'. 

'I can come over when I want?' she said half sullenly. 

'Yes, ' he assented, 'but you won't want. '

He drew her by the hand with a solemn tremulous feeling, and kissedher on the cheek. He would have liked to give her their father'sdying letter. It was there, in his coat-pocket. But he shrank fromthe emotion of it. No, he must go. He had done all he could. 

She opened the door for him, and took him to the garden-gate insilence. 

'When I'm married, ' she said shortly, 'if ever I am--Lord knows!--you can tell Uncle Reuben and Dora?'

'Yes. Good-bye. '

The gate closed behind him. He went away, hurrying towards theAuteuil station. 

When he landed again in the Paris streets, he stood irresolute. 

'One more look, ' he said to himself, 'one more. '

And he turned down the Rue Chantal. There was the familiar archway, and the light shining behind the porter's door. Was her roomalready stripped and bare, or was the broken glass--poor dumbprophet!--still there, against the wall?

He wandered on through the lamp-lit city and the crowded pavements. Elise--the wraith of her--went with him, hand in hand, ghost withghost, amid this multitude of men. Sometimes, breaking from thisdream-companionship, he would wake with terror to the perception ofhis true, his utter loneliness. He was not made to be alone, andthe thought that nowhere in this great Paris was there a singlehuman being to whose friendly eye or hand he might turn him in hisneed, swept across him from time to time, contracting the heart. Dora--Mr. Ancrum--if they knew, they would be sorry. 

Then again indifference and blankness came upon him, and he couldonly move feebly on, seeing everything in a blur and mist. Afterthese long days and nights of sleeplessness, semi-starvation, andterrible excitement, every nerve was sick, every organ out of gear. The lights of the Tuileries, the stately pile of the Louvre, undera gray driving sky. --There would be rain soon--ah, there it came!the great drops hissing along the pavement. He pushed on to theriver, careless of the storm, soothed, indeed, by the cool dashesof rain in his face and eyes. 

The Place de la Concorde seemed to him as day, so brilliantwas the glare of its lamps. To the right, the fairyland of theChamps-Elysees, the trees tossing under the sudden blast; in front, the black trench of the river. On, on--let him see it all--gatherit all into his accusing heart and brain, and then at a stroke blotout the inward and the outward vision, and 'cease upon the midnightwith no pain'!

He walked till he could walk no more; then he sank on a dark seaton the Quai Saint-Michel, cursing himself. Had he no nerve left forthe last act--was that what this delay, this fooling meant? Coward!

But not here! not in these streets--this publicity! Back--to thislittle noisome room. There lock the door, and make an end!

On the way northward, at the command of a sudden caprice, he satoutside a blazing cafe on the Boulevard and ordered absinthe, whichhe had never tasted. While he waited he looked round on the paintedwomen, on the men escorting them, on the loungers with theirnewspapers and cigars, the shouting, supercilious waiters. But allthe little odious details of the scene escaped him; he felt onlythe touchingness of his human comradeship, the yearning of a commonlife, bruised and wounded but still alive within him. 

Then he drank the stuff they gave him, loathed it, paid andstaggered on. When he reached his hotel he crept upstairs, dreadingto meet any of the harsh-faced people who frowned as he passedthem. He had done abject things these last three days to conciliatethem--tipped the waiter, ordered food, not that he might eat it butthat he might pay for it, bowed to the landlady--all to save theshrinking of his sore and quivering nerves. In vain! It seemed tohim that since that last look from Elise as she nestled into thefern, there had been no kindness for him in human eyes--save, perhaps, from that woman with the child. 

As he dragged himself up to his fourth floor, the stimulant he hadtaken began to work upon his starved senses. The key was in hisdoor, he turned it and fell into his room, while the door, with thekey still in it, swung to behind him. Guiding himself by thefurniture, he reached the only chair the room possessed--anarm-chair of the commonest and cheapest hotel sort, which, becauseof the uncertainty of its legs, the _femme de chambre_ hadpropped up against the bed. He sat down in it and his head fellback on the counterpane. There was much to do. He had to write toJohn about the sale of his stock and the payment of his debts. Hehad to put his father's letter into an envelope for Louie, to sendall the papers and letters he had on him and a last message to Mr. Ancrum, and then to post these letters, so that nothing privatemight fall into the hands of the French police, who would, ofcourse, open his bag. 

While these thoughts were rising in him, a cloud came over thebrain, bringing with it, as it seemed, the first moment of easewhich had been his during this awful fortnight. Before he yieldedhimself to it he thrust his hand into his coat-pocket with a suddenvague anxiety to feel what was there. But even as he withdrew hisfingers they relaxed; a black object came with them, and fellunheeded, first on his knee, then on to a coat lying on the floorbetween him and the window. 

A quarter of an hour afterwards there was a stir and voices on thelanding outside. Some one knocked at the door of No. 139. Noanswer. 'The key is in the door. _Ouvrez donc!_' cried thewaiter, as he ran downstairs again to the restaurant, which wasstill crowded. The visitor opened the door and peeped in. Somequick words broke from him. He rushed in and up to the bed. Butdirectly the heavy feverish breathing of the figure in the chaircaught his ear his look of sudden horror relaxed, and he fell back, looking at the sleeping youth. 

It was a piteous sight he saw! Exhaustion, helplessness, sorrow, physical injury, and moral defeat, were written in every line ofthe poor drawn face and shrunken form. The brow was furrowed, thebreathing hard, the mouth dry and bloodless. Upon the mind of thenew-comer, possessed as it was with the image of what David Grievehad been two short months before, the effect of the spectacle waspresently overwhelming. 

He fell on his knees beside the sleeper. But as he did so, henoticed the black thing on the floor, stooped to it, and took itup. That it should be a loaded revolver seemed to him at thatmoment the most natural thing in the world, little used as hepersonally was to such possessions. He looked at it carefully, tookout the two cartridges it contained, put them into one pocket andthe revolver into the other. 

Then he laid his arm round the lad's neck. 

'David!'

The young man woke directly and sat up, shaking with terror andexcitement. He pushed his visitor from him, looking at him withdefiance. Then he slipped his hand inside his coat and sprang upwith a cry. 

'David!--dear boy--dear fellow!'

The voice penetrated the lad's ear. He caught his visitor anddragged him forward to the light. It fell on the twisted face andwet eyes of Mr. Ancrum. So startling was the vision, so poignantwere the associations which it set vibrating, that David stoodstaring and trembling, struck dumb. 

'Oh, my poor lad! my poor lad! John wanted me to come yesterday, and I delayed. I was a selfish wretch. Now I will take you home. '

David fell again upon his chair, too feeble to speak, too feebleeven to weep, the little remaining colour ebbing from his cheeks. The minister used all his strength, and laid him on the bed. Thenhe rang and made even the callous and haughty madame, who waspresently summoned, listen to and obey him while he sent for brandyand a doctor, and let the air of the night into the stifling room. 

CHAPTER XII

In two or three days the English doctor who was attending Davidstrongly advised Mr. Ancrum to get his charge home. The fiercestrain his youth had sustained acting through the nervous systemhad disordered almost every bodily function, and the collapse whichfollowed Mr. Ancrum's appearance was severe. He would lie in hisbed motionless and speechless, volunteered no confidence, andshowed hardly any rallying power. 

'Get him out of this furnace and that doghole of a room, ' said thedoctor. 'He has come to grief here somehow--that's plain. You won'tmake anything of him till you move him. '

When the lad was at last stretched on the deck of a Channel steamerspeeding to the English coast, and the sea breeze had brought afaint touch of returning colour to his cheek, he asked the questionhe had never yet had the physical energy to ask. 

'Why did you come, and how did you find me?'

Then it appeared that the old cashier at Heywood's bank, who hadtaken a friendly interest in the young bookseller since the openingof his account, had dropped a private word to John in the course ofconversation, which had alarmed that youth not a little. His ownlast scrawl from David had puzzled and disquieted him, and hestraightway marched off to Mr. Ancrum to consult. Whereupon theminister wrote cautiously and affectionately to David asking forsome prompt and full explanation of things for his friends' sake. The letter was, as we know, never opened, and therefore neveranswered. Whereupon John's jealous misery on Louie's account andMr. Ancrum's love for David had so worked that the minister hadbroken in upon his scanty savings and started for Paris at a fewhours' notice. Once in the Rue Chantal he had come easily onDavid's track. 

Naturally he had inquired after Louie as soon as David was in acondition to be questioned at all. The young man hesitated amoment, then he said resolutely, 'She is married, ' and would say nomore. Mr. Ancrum pressed the matter a little, but his patientmerely shook his head, and the sight of him as he lay there on thepillow was soon enough to silence the minister. 

On the evening before they left Paris he called for a telegraphform, wrote a message and paid the reply, but Mr. Ancrum sawnothing of either. When the reply arrived David crushed it in hishand with a strange look, half bitterness, half relief, and flungit behind a piece of furniture standing near. 

Now, on the cool, wind-swept deck, he seemed more inclined to talkthan he had been yet. He asked questions about John and theLomaxes--he even inquired after Lucy, as to whom the minister whohad lately improved an acquaintance with Dora and her father, begunthrough David, could only answer vaguely that he believed she wasstill in the south. But he volunteered nothing about his ownaffairs or the cause of the state in which Mr. Ancrum had foundhim. 

Every now and then, indeed, as they stood together at the side ofthe vessel, David leaning heavily against it, his words would failhim altogether, and he would be left staring stupidly, the greatblack eyes widening, the lower lip falling--over the shiftingbrilliance of the sea. 

Ancrum was almost sure too that in the darkness of their last nightin Paris there had been, hour after hour, a sound of hard andstifled weeping, mingled with the noises from the street and fromthe station; and to-day the youth in the face was more quenchedthan ever, in spite of the signs of reviving health. There had beena woman in the case, of course: Louie might have misbehavedherself; but after all the world is so made that no sister can makea brother suffer as David had evidently suffered--and then therewas the revolver! About this last, after one or two restlessmovements of search, which Mr. Ancrum interpreted, David had neverasked, and the minister, timid man of peace that he was, had resoldit before leaving. 

Well, it was a problem, and it must be left to time. Meanwhile Mr. Ancrum was certainly astonished that _any_ love affair shouldhave had such a destructive volcanic power with the lad. For it wasno mere raw and sensuous nature, no idle and morbid brain. Onewould have thought that so many different aptitudes and capacitieswould have kept each other in check. 

As they neared Manchester, David grew plainly restless and ill atease. He looked out sharply for the name of each succeeding town, half turning afterwards, as though to speak to his companion; butit was not till they were within ten minutes of the Central Stationthat he said--

'John will want to know about Louie. She is married, --as I toldyou, --to a French sculptor. I have handed over to her all myfather's money--that is why I drew it out. '

Mr. Ancrum edged up closer to him--all ears--waiting for more. Butthere was nothing more. 

'And you are satisfied?' he said at last. 

David nodded and looked out of window intently. 

'What is the man's name?'

David either did not or would not hear, and Mr. Ancrum let himalone. But the news was startling. So the boy had stripped himself, and must begin the world again as before! What had that minx beenafter?

Manchester again. David looked out eagerly from the cab, his handtrembling on his knee, beads of perspiration on his face. 

They turned up the narrow street, and there in the distance to theright was the stall and the shop, and a figure on the steps. Mr. Ancrum had sent a card before them, and John was on the watch. 

The instant the cab stopped, and before the driver could dismount, John had opened the door. Putting his head in he peered at the pairinside, and at the opposite seat, with his small short-sightedeyes. 

'Where is she?' he said hoarsely, barring the way. 

Mr. Ancrum looked at his companion. David had shrunk back into thecorner, with a white hangdog look, and said nothing. The ministerinterposed. 

'David will tell you all, ' he said gently. 'First help me in withhim, and the bags. He is a sick man. '

With a huge effort John controlled himself, and they got inside. Then he shut the shop door and put his back against it. 

'Tell me where she is, ' he repeated shortly. 

'She is married, ' David said in a low voice, but looking up fromthe chair on which he had sunk. ' By now--she is married. I heard bytelegram last night that all was arranged for to-day. '

The lad opposite made a sharp, inarticulate sound which startledthe minister's ear. Then clutching the handle of the door, heresumed sharply--

'Who has she married?'

The assumption of the right to question was arroganceitself--strange in the dumb, retiring creature whom the ministerhad hitherto known only as David's slave and shadow!

'A French sculptor, ' said David steadily, but propping his head andhand against the counter, so as to avoid John's stare--'a mancalled Montjoie. I was a brute--I neglected her. She got into hishands. Then I sent for all my money to bribe him to marry her. Andhe has. '

'You--you _blackguard!_' cried John. 

David straightened instinctively under the blow, and his eyes metJohn's for one fierce moment. Then Mr. Ancrum thought he would havefainted. The minister took rough hold of John by the shoulders. 

'If you can't stay and hold your tongue, ' he said, 'you must go. Heis worn out with the journey, and I shall get him to bed. Here'ssome money: suppose you run to the house round the corner, inPrince's Street; ask if they've got some strong soup, and, if theyhave, hurry back with it. Come--look sharp. And--one moment--you'vebeen sleeping here, I suppose? Well, I shall take your room for abit, if that'll suit you. This fellow'll have to be looked after. '

The little lame creature spoke like one who meant to have his way. John took the coin, hesitated, and stumbled out. 

For days afterwards there was silence between him and David, exceptfor business directions. He avoided being in the shop with hisemployer, and would stand for hours on the step, ostensiblywatching the stall, but in reality doing no business that he couldhelp. Whenever Mr. Ancrum caught sight of him he was leaningagainst the wall, his hat slouched over his eyes, his hands in hispockets, utterly inert and listless, more like a log than a humanbeing. Still he was no less stout, lumpish, and pink-faced thanbefore. His fate might have all the tragic quality; nature had nonethe less inexorably endowed him with the externals of farce. 

Meanwhile David dragged himself from his bed to the shop and set towork to pick up dropped threads. The customers, who had beenformerly interested in him, discovered his return, and came in toinquire why he had been so long away, or, in the case of one ortwo, whether he had executed certain commissions in Paris. Theexplanation of illness, however, circulated from the first momentby Mr. Ancrum, and perforce adopted--though with an inward rage andrebellion--by David himself, was amply sufficient to cover hisomissions and inattentions, and to ease his resumption of his oldplace. His appearance indeed was still ghastly. The skin of theface had the tightened, transparent look of weakness; the eyes, reddened and sunk, showed but little of their old splendour betweenthe blue circles beneath and the heavy brows above; even the hairseemed to have lost its boyish curl, and fell in harsh, troublesomewaves over the forehead, whence its owner was perpetually andimpatiently thrusting it back. All the bony structure of the facehad been emphasised at the expense of its young grace and bloom, and the new indications of moustache and beard did but add to itsstriking and painful black and white. And the whole impression ofchange was completed by the melancholy aloofness, the shrinkingdistrust with which eyes once overflowing with the frankness andeagerness of one of the most accessible of human souls now lookedout upon the world. 

'Was it fever?' said a young Owens College professor who had takena lively interest from the beginning in the clever lad's venture. 'Upon my word! you do look pulled down. Paris may be the first cityin the world--it is an insanitary hole all the same. So you neverfound time to inquire after those Moliere editions for me?'

David racked his brains. What was it he had been asked to do? Heremembered half an hour's talk on one of those early days with abookseller on the Quai Voltaire--was it about this commission? Hecould not recall. 

'No, sir, ' he said, stammering and flushing. 'I believe I did asksomewhere, but I can't remember. '

'It's very natural, very natural, ' said the professor kindly. 'Never mind. I'll send you the particulars again, and you can keepyour eyes open for me. And, look here, take your business easy fora while. You'll get on--you're sure to get on--if you only recoveryour health. '

David opened the door for him in silence. 

The reawakening of his old life in him was strange and slow. Whenhe first found himself back among his books and catalogues, hisledgers and business memoranda, he was bewildered and impatient. What did these elaborate notes, with their cabalistic signs andabbreviations--whether as to the needs of customers, or thewhereabouts of books, or the history of prices--mean or matter? Hewas like a man who has lost a sense. Then the pressure of certaindebts which should have been met out of the money in the bank firstput some life into him. He looked into his financial situation andfound it grave, though not desperate. All hope of a large and easyexpansion of business was, of course, gone. The loss of his capitalhad reduced him to the daily shifts and small laboriousaccumulations with which he had begun. But this factor in his statewas morally of more profit to him at the moment than any other. With such homely medicines nature and life can often do most forus. 

Such was Ancrum's belief, and in consequence he showed a veryremarkable wisdom during these early days of David's return. 

'As far as I can judge, there has been a bad shake to the heart inmore senses than one, ' had been the dry remark of the Paris doctor;'and as for nervous system, it's a mercy he's got any left. Takecare of him, but for Heaven's sake don't make an invalid ofhim--that would be the finish. '

So that Ancrum offered no fussy opposition to the resumption of theyoung man's daily work, though at first it produced a constantbattle with exhaustion and depression. But never day or night didthe minister forget his charge. He saw that he ate and drank; heenforced a few common sense remedies for the nervous ills which themoral convulsion had left behind it, ills which the lad in hisirritable humiliation would fain have hidden even from him; aboveall he knew how to say a word which kept Dora and Daddy and otherfriends away for a time, and how to stand between David and thatchoked and miserable John. 

He had the strength of mind also to press for no confidence and toexpect no thanks. He had little fear of any further attempts atsuicide, though he would have found it difficult perhaps to explainwhy. But instinctively he felt that for all practical purposesDavid had been mad when he found him, and that he was mad nolonger. He was wretched, and only a fraction of his mind was inManchester and in his business--that was plain. But, in howeverimperfect a way, he was again master of himself; and the ministerbided his time, putting his ultimate trust in one of the finestmental and physical constitutions he had ever known. 

In about ten days David took up his hat one afternoon and, for thefirst time, ventured into the streets. On his return he was walkingdown Potter Street in a storm of wind and rain, when he ran againstsome one who was holding an umbrella right in front of her andbattling with the weather. In his recoil he saw that it was Dora. 

Dora too looked up, a sudden radiant pleasure in her faceoverflowing her soft eyes and lips. 

'Oh, Mr. Grieve! And are you really better?'

'Yes, ' he said briefly. 'May I walk with you a bit?'

'Oh no!--I don't believe you ought to be out in such weather. I'lljust come the length of the street with you. '

And she turned and walked with him, chattering fast, and of course, from the point of view of an omniscience which could not have beenhers, foolishly. Had he liked Paris?--what he saw of it at leastbefore he had been ill?--and how long had he been ill? Why had henot let Mr. Ancrum or some one know sooner? And would he tell hermore about Louie? She heard that she was married, but there was somuch she, Dora, wanted to hear. 

To his first scanty answers she paid in truth but small heed, forthe joy of seeing him again was soon effaced by the painfulimpression of his altered aspect. The more she looked at him, themore her heart went out to him; her whole being became an effusionof pity and tenderness, and her simplest words, maidenly andself-restrained as she was, were in fact charged with somethingelectric, ineffable. His suffering, his neighbourhood, her ownsympathy--she was taken up, overwhelmed by these generalimpressions. Inferences, details escaped her. 

But as she touched on the matter of Louie, and they were now at hisown steps, he said to her hurriedly--

'Walk a little further, and I'll tell you. John's in there. '

She opened her eyes, not understanding, and then demurred a littleon the ground of his health and the rain. 

'Oh, I'm all right, ' he said impatiently. 'Look here, will you walkto Chetham's Library? There'll be a quiet place there, in thereading room--sure to be--where we can talk. '

She assented, and very soon they were mounting the black oak stairsleading to this old corner of Manchester. At the top of the stairsthey saw in the distance, at the end of the passage on to whichopen the readers' studies, each with its lining of folios and itsoaken lattice, a librarian, who nodded to David, and took a look atDora. Further on they stumbled over a small boy from the charityschool who wished to lionise them over the whole building. But whenhe had been routed, they found the beautiful panelled and paintedreading-room quite empty, and took possession of it in peace. Davidled the way to an oriel window he had become familiar with in theoff-times of his first years at Manchester, and they seatedthemselves there with a low sloping desk between them, looking outon the wide rain-swept yard outside, the buildings of thegrammar-school, and the black mass of the cathedral. 

Manchester had never been more truly Manchester than on this darkJuly afternoon, with its low shapeless clouds, its darkness, wind, and pelting rain. David, staring out through the lozenge panes atthe familiar gloom beyond, was suddenly carried by repulsion intothe midst of a vision which was an agony--of a spring forest cut bythreadlike paths; of a shadeless sun; of a white city steeped incharm, in gaiety. 

Dora watched him timidly, new perceptions and alarms dawning inher. 

'You were going to tell me about Louie, ' she said. 

He returned to himself, and abruptly turned with his back to thewindow, so that he saw the outer world no more. 

'You heard that she was married?'

'Yes. '

'She has married a brute. It was partly my fault. I wanted to berid of her; she got in my way. This man was in the same house; Ileft her to herself, and partly, I believe, to spite me, she wentoff with him. Then at the last when she wouldn't leave him I madeher marry him. I bribed him to marry her. And he did. I had justenough money to make it worth his while. But he will ill-treat her;and she won't stay with him. She will go from bad to worse. '

Dora drew back, with her hand on the desk, staring at him withincredulous horror. 

'But you were ill?' she stammered. 

He shook his head. 

'Never mind my being ill. I wanted you to know, because you weregood to her, and I'm not going to be a hypocrite to you. Nobodyelse need know anything but that she's married, which is true. IfI'd looked after her it mightn't have happened--perhaps. But Ididn't look after her--I couldn't. '

His face, propped in his hands, was hidden from her. She was in awhirl of excitement and tragic impression--understanding something, divining more. 

'Louie was always so self-willed, ' she said trembling. 

'Aye. That don't make it any better. You remember all I told youabout her before? You know we didn't get on; she wasn't nice to me, and I didn't suit her, I suppose. But all this year, I don't knowwhy, she's been on my mind from morning till night; I've alwaysfelt sure, somehow, that she would come to harm; and the worryingoneself about her--well! it has seemed _to grow into one's verybones_. '--He threw out the last words after a pause, in which hehad seemed to search for some phrase wherewith to fit the energy ofhis feeling. 'I took her to Paris to keep her out of mischief. I hadmuch rather have gone alone; but she would not ask you to take herin, and I couldn't leave her with John. Well, then, she got in myway--I told you--and I let her go to the dogs. There--it'sdone--_done!_'

He turned on his seat, one hand drumming the desk, while his eyesfixed themselves apparently on the portrait of Sir Humphry Chethamover the carved mantelpiece. His manner was hard and rapid; neithervoice nor expression had any of the simplicity or directness ofremorse. 

Dora remained silent looking at him; her slender hands were pressedtight against either cheek; the tears rose slowly till they filledher grey eyes. 

'It is very sad, ' she said in a low voice. 

There was a pause. 

'Yes--it's sad. So are most things in this world, perhaps. Allnatural wants seem just to lead us to misery sooner or later. Andwho gave them to us--who put us here--with no choice but just to goon blundering from one muddle into another?'

Their eyes met. It was as though he had remembered her religion, and could not, in his bitterness, refrain from an indirect fling atit. 

As for her, what he said was strange and repellent to her. But herforlorn passion, so long trampled on, cried within her; her pureheart was one prayer, one exquisite throb of pain and pity. 

'Did some one deceive you?' she asked, so low that the words seemedjust breathed into the air. 

'No, --I deceived myself. '

Then as he looked at her an impulse of confession crossed his mind. Sympathy, sincerity, womanly sweetness, these things he had alwaysassociated with Dora Lomax. Instinctively he had chosen her for afriend long ago as soon as their first foolish spars were over. 

But the impulse passed away. He thought of her severity, herreligion, her middle-class canons and judgments, which perhaps wereall the stricter because of Daddy's laxities. What common groundbetween her and his passion, between her and Elise? No! if he mustspeak--if, in the end, he proved too weak to forbear wholly fromspeech--let it be to ears more practised, and more human!

So he choked back his words, and Dora felt instinctively that hewould tell her no more. Her consciousness of this was a mingledhumiliation and relief; it wounded her to feel that she had solittle command of him; yet she dreaded what he might say. Paris wasa wicked place--so the world reported. Her imagination, sensitive, Christianised, ascetic, shrank from what he might have done. Perhaps the woman shrank too. Instead, she threw herself upon thethought, the bliss, that he was there again beside her, restored, rescued from the gulf, if gulf there had been. 

He went back to the subject of Louie, and told her as much as agirl of Dora's kind could be told of what he himself knew ofLouie's husband. In the course of his two days' search for them, which had included an interview with Madame Cervin, he had becometolerably well acquainted with Montjoie's public character andcareer. Incidentally parts of the story of Louie's behaviour camein, and for one who knew her as Dora did, her madness andwilfulness emerged, could be guessed at, little as the brotherintended to excuse himself thereby. How, indeed, should he excusehimself? Louie's character was a fixed quantity to be reckoned onby all who had dealings with her. One might as well excuse oneselffor letting a lunatic escape by the pretext of his lunacy. Doraperfectly understood his tone. Yet in her heart of hearts sheforgave him--for she knew not what!--became his champion. There wasa dry sharpness of self-judgment, a settled conviction of comingill in all he said which wrung her heart. And how blanched he wasby that unknown misery! How should she not pity, not forgive? Itwas the impotence of her own feeling to express itself that swelledher throat. And poor Lucy, too--ah! poor Lucy. 

Suddenly, as he was speaking, he noticed his companion moreclosely, the shabbiness of the little black hat and jacket, the newlines round the eyes and mouth. 

'_You_ have not been well, ' he said abruptly. ' How has yourfather been going on?'

She started and tried to answer quietly. But her nerves had beenshaken by their talk, and by that inward play of emotion which hadgone on out of his sight. Quite unexpectedly she broke down, andcovering her eyes with one hand, began to sob gently. 

'I can't do anything with him now, poor father, ' she said, when shecould control herself. 'He won't listen to me at all. The debts arebeginning to be dreadful, and the business is going down fast. Idon't know what we shall do. And it all makes him worse--drives himto drink. '

David thought a minute, lifted out of himself for the first time. 

'Shall I come to-night to see him?'

'Oh do!' she said eagerly; 'come about nine o'clock. I will tellhim--perhaps that will keep him in. '

Then she went into more details than she had yet done; named thecreditors who were pressing; told how her church-work, though sheworked herself blind night and day, could do but little for them;how both the restaurant and the reading-room were emptying, and shecould now get no servants to stay, but Sarah, because of herfather's temper. 

It seemed to him as he listened that the story, with its sickenedhope and on-coming fate, was all in some strange way familiar; itor something like it was to have been expected; for him the strangeand jarring thing now would have been to find a happy person. Hewas in that young morbid state when the mind hangs its own cloudover the universe. 

But Dora got up to go, tying on her veil with shaking hands. Shewas so humbly grateful to him that he was sorry for her--that hecould spare a thought from his own griefs for her. 

As they went down the dark stairs together, he asked after Lucy. She was now staying with some relations at Wakely, a cotton town inthe valley of the Irwell, Dora said; but she would probably go backto Hastings for the winter. It was now settled that she and herfather could not get on; and the stepmother that was tobe--Purcell, however, was taking his time--as determined not to bebothered with her. 

David listened with a certain discomfort. 'It was what she did forme, ' he thought, 'that set him against her for good and all. Oldbrute!'

Aloud he said: 'I wrote to her, you know, and sent her that book. She did write me a queer letter back--it was all dashes andsplashes--about the street-preachings on the beach, and a blind manwho sang hymns. I can't remember why she hated him so particularly!'

She answered his faint smile. Lucy was a child for both of them. Then he took her to the door of the Parlour, noticing, as he partedfrom her, how dingy and neglected the place looked. 

Afterwards--directly he had left her--the weight of his pain whichhad been lightened for an hour descended upon him again, shuttingthe doors of the senses, leaving him alone within, face to facewith the little figure which haunted him day and night. During thedays since his return from Paris the faculty of projectiveimagination, which had endowed his childhood with a second world, and peopled it with the incidents and creatures of his books, hadgrown to an abnormal strength. Behind the stage on which he was nowpainfully gathering together the fragments of his old life, itcreated for him another, where, amid scenes richly set and lit withperpetual summer, he lived with Elise, walked with her, watchedher, lay at her feet, quarrelled with her, forgave her. His dramadid not depend on memory alone, or rather it was memory passinginto creation. Within its bounds he was himself and not himself;his part was loftier than any he had ever played in reality; hiseloquence was no longer tongue-tied--it flowed and penetrated. Hislove might be cruel, but he was on her level, nay, her master; hecould reproach, wrestle with, command her; and at the end evoke thepardoning flight into each other's arms--confession--rapture. 

Till suddenly, poor fool! a little bolt shot from the bowof memory--the image of a _diligence_ rattling along a whiteroad--or of black rain-beaten quays, with their lines ofwavering lamps--or of a hideous upper room with blue repfurniture where one could neither move nor breathe--wouldstrike his dream to fragments, and as it fell to ruins withinhim, his whole being would become one tumult of inarticulatecries--delirium--anguish--with which the self at the heart ofall seemed to be wrestling for life. 

It was so to-day after he left Dora. First the vision, theenchantment--then the agony, the sob of desolation which couldhardly be kept down. He saw nothing in the streets. He walked onpast the Exchange, where an unusual crowd was gathered, elbowinghis way through it mechanically, but not in truth knowing that itwas there. 

When he reached the shop he ran past John, who was reading anewspaper, up to his room and locked the door. 

About an hour afterwards Mr. Ancrum came in, all excitement, abatch of papers under his arm. 

'It is going to be war, John! _War_--I tell you! and such awar. They'll be beaten, those braggarts, if there's justice inheaven. The streets are all full; I could hardly get here;everybody talking of how it will affect Manchester. Time enough tothink about that! What a set of selfish beasts we all are! Where'sDavid?'

'Come in an hour ago!' said John sullenly; 'he went upstairs. '

'Ah, he will have heard--the placards are all over the place. '

The minister went upstairs and knocked at David's door. 

'David!'

'All right, ' said a voice from inside. 

'David, what do you think of the news?'

'What news?' after a pause. 

'Why, the war, man! Haven't you seen the evening paper?'

No answer. The minister stood listening at the door. Then a tenderlook dawned in his odd grey face. 

'David, look here, I'll push you the paper under the door. You'retired, I suppose--done yourself up with your walk?'

'I'll be down to supper, ' said the voice from inside, shortly. 'Will you push in the paper?'

The minister descended, and sat by himself in the kitchen thinking. He was a wiser man now than when he had gone out, and not only asto that reply of the King of Prussia to the French ultimatum on thesubject of the Hohenzollern candidature. 

For he had met Barbier in the street. How to keep the volubleFrenchman from bombarding David in his shattered state had been oneof Mr. Ancrum's most anxious occupations since his return. It hadbeen done, but it had been difficult. For to whom did David owe hisfirst reports of Paris if not to the old comrade who had sent himthere, found him a lodging, and taught him to speak French so asnot to disgrace himself and his country? However, Ancrum had foundmeans to intercept Barbier's first visit, and had checkmated hisattempts ever since. As a natural result, Barbier was extremelyirritable. Illness--stuff! The lad had been getting intoscrapes--that he would swear. 

On this occasion, when Ancrum stumbled across him, he foundBarbier, at first bubbling over with the war news; torn differentways; now abusing the Emperor for a cochon and a _fou_, prophesying unlimited disaster for France, and sneering at theranting crowds on the boulevards; the next moment spouting the sameanti-Prussian madness with which his whole unfortunate country wasat the moment infected. In the midst of his gallop of talk, however, the old man suddenly stopped, took off his hat, andrunning one excited hand through his bristling tufts of grey hairpointed to Ancrum with the other. 

'_Halte la_!' he said, 'I know what your young rascal has beenafter. I know, and I'll be bound you don't. Trust a lover forhoodwinking a priest. Come along here. '

And putting his arm through Ancrum's, he swept him away, repeating, as they walked, the substance of a letter from his precious nephew, in which the Barbizon episode as it appeared to the inhabitants ofNo. 7 Rue Chantal and to the students of Taranne's _atelier defemmes_ was related, with every embellishment of witticism and_blague_ that the imagination of a French _rapin_ couldsuggest. Mademoiselle Delaunay was not yet restored, according tothe writer, to the _atelier_ which she adorned. '_On criaitau scandale_, ' mainly because she was such a clever littleanimal, and the others envied and hated her. She had removed to astudio near the Luxembourg, and Taranne was said to be teaching herprivately. Meanwhile Dubois requested his dear uncle to supply himwith information as to _l'autre;_ it would be gratefullyreceived by an appreciative circle. As for _la soeur del'autre_, the dear uncle no doubt knew that she had migratedto the studio of Monsieur Montjoie, an artist whose littleaffairs in the _genre_ had already, before her advent, attaineda high degree of interest and variety. On a review of all thecircumstances, the dear uncle would perhaps pardon the writer if hewere less disposed than before to accept those estimable views ofthe superiority of the English _morale_ to the French, whichhad been so ably impressed upon him during his visit to Manchester. 

For after a very short stay at Brussels the nephew had boldly andsuddenly pushed over to England, and had spent a fortnight inBarbier's lodgings reconnoitering his uncle. As to the uncle, Xavier had struck him, on closer inspection, as one of the mostdissolute young reprobates he had ever beheld. He had preached tohim like a father, holding up to him the image of his own absentfavourite, David Grieve, as a brilliant illustration of what couldbe achieved even in this wicked world by morals and capacity. Andin the intervals he had supplied the creature with money and amusedhimself with his _gaminerie_ from morning till night. On theirparting the uncle had with great frankness confessed to the nephewthe general opinion he had formed of his character; all the samethey were now embarked on a tolerably frequent correspondence; andDubois' ultimate chance of obtaining his uncle's savings, on the_chasse_ of which he had come to England, would have seemed tothe cool observer by no means small. 

'But now, look here, ' said Barbier, taking off his spectacles towipe away the 'merry tear' which dimmed them, after therecapitulation of Xavier's last letter, 'no more nonsense! I comeand have it out with that young man. I sent him to Paris, and I'llknow what he did there. _He's_ not made of burnt sugar. Ofcourse he's broken his heart--we all do. Serve him right. '

'It's easy to laugh, ' said Ancrum dryly, 'only these young fellowshave sometimes an uncomfortable way of vindicating their dignity byshooting themselves. '

Barbier started and looked interrogative. 

'Now suppose you listen to me, ' said the minister. 

And the two men resumed their patrol of Albert Square while Ancrumdescribed his rescue of David. The story was simply told butimpressive. Barbier whistled, stared, and surrendered. Nay, he wentto the other extreme. He loved the absurd, but he loved theromantic more. An hour before, David's adventures had been to him asubject of comic opera. As Ancrum talked, they took on 'the grandstyle, ' and at the end he could no more have taken liberties withhis old pupil than with the hero of the _Nuit de Mai. _ Hebecame excited, sympathetic, declamatory, tore open old sores, andMr. Ancrum had great difficulty in getting rid of him. 

So now the minister was sitting at home meditating. Through theatmosphere of mockery with which Dubois had invested the story hesaw the outlines of it with some clearness. 

CHAPTER XIII

In the midst of his meditations, however, the minister did notforget to send John out for David's supper, and when Davidappeared, white, haggard, and exhausted, it was to find himselfthought for with a care like a woman's. The lad, being sick andirritable, showed more resentment than gratitude; pushed away hisfood, looking sombrely the while at the dry bread and tea whichformed the minister's invariable evening meal as though to ask whenhe was to be allowed his rational freedom again to eat or fast ashe pleased. He scarcely answered Ancrum's remarks about the war, and finally he got up heavily, saying he was going out. 

'You ought to be in your bed, ' said Ancrum, protesting almost forthe first time, 'and it's there you will be--tied by the leg--if youdon't take a decent care of yourself. '

David took no notice and went. He dragged himself to the GermanAthenaeum, of which he had become a member in the first flush ofhis inheritance. There were the telegrams from Paris, and an eagercrowd reading and discussing them. As he pushed his way in at lastand read, the whole scene rose before him as though he werethere--the summer boulevards with their trees and kiosks, themoving crowds, the shouts, the 'Marseillaise'--the blind infectiousmadness of it all. And one short fortnight ago, what man in Europecould have guessed that such a day was already on the knees of thegods?

Afterwards, on the way to the Parlour, he talked to Elise about it, --placing her on the boulevards with the rest, and himself besideher to guard her from the throng. Hour by hour, this morbid gift ofhis, though it tortured him, provided an outlet for passion, savedhim from numbness and despair. 

When he got to Dora's sitting-room he found Daddy sitting there, smoking sombrely over the empty grate. He had expected a flood ofquestions, and had steeled himself to meet them. Nothing of thesort. The old man took very little notice of him and his travels. Considering the petulant advice with which Daddy had sent him off, David was astonished and, in the end, piqued. He recovered thetongue which he had lost for Ancrum, and was presently discussingthe war like anybody else. Reminiscences of the talk amid which hehad lived during those Paris weeks came back to them; and herepeated some of them which bore on the present action of NapoleonIII and his ministry, with a touch of returning fluency. He was, infact, playing for Daddy's attention. 

Daddy watched him silently with a wild and furtive eye. At last, looking round to see whether Dora was there, and finding that shehad gone out, he laid a lean long hand on David's knee. 

'That'll do, Davy. Davy, why were you all that time away?'

The young man drew himself up suddenly, brought back to realitiesfrom this first brief moment of something like forgetfulness. Hetried for his common excuse of illness; but it stuck in his throat. 

'I can't tell you, Daddy, ' he said at last, slowly. 'I might tellyou lies, but I won't. It concerns myself alone. '

Daddy still bent forward, his peaked wizard's face peering at hiscompanion. 

'You've been in trouble, Davy?'

'Yes, Daddy. But if you ask me questions I shall go. '

He spoke with a sudden fierce resolution. 

Daddy paid no attention. He threw himself back in his chair with along breath. 

'Bedad, and I knew it, Davy! But sorrow a bit o' pity will you getout o' me, my boy--sorrow a bit!'

He lay staring at his companion with a glittering hostile look. 

'By the powers!' he said presently, 'to be a gossoon of twenty againand throubled about a woman!'

David sprang up. 

'Well, Daddy, I'll bid you good night! I wanted to hear somethingabout your own affairs, which don't seem to be flourishing. ButI'll wait till Miss Dora's at home. '

'Sit down, sit down again!' cried Lomax angrily, catching him bythe arm. 'I'll not meddle with you. Yes, we're in a bad way, adeuced bad way, if you listen to Dora. If it weren't for her I'dhave walked myself off long ago and let the devil take thecreditors. '

David sat down and tried to get at the truth. But Daddy turnedrestive, and now invited the traveller's talk he had beforerepelled. He fell into his own recollections of the Paris streetsin '48, and his vanity enjoyed showing this slip of a fellow thatold Lomax was well acquainted with France and French politicsbefore he was born. 

Presently Dora came in, saw that her father had been beguiled intoforegoing his usual nocturnal amusements, and looked soft gratitudeat David. But as for him, he had never realised so vividly thequeer aloofness and slipperiness of Daddy's nature, nor themiserable insecurity of Dora's life. Such men were not meant tohave women depending on them. 

He went downstairs pondering what could be done for the oldvagabond. Drink had indeed made ravages since he had seen him last. For Dora's sake the young man recalled with eagerness somestatements and suggestions in a French treatise on 'L'Alcoolisme'he chanced to have been turning over among his foreign scientificstock. Dora, no doubt, had invoked the parson; he would endeavourto bring in the doctor. And there was a young one, a frequenter ofthe stall in Birmingham Street, not as yet overburdened withpractice, who occurred to him as clever and likely to help. 

Nor did he forget his purpose. The very next morning he got hold ofthe young man in question. Out came the French book, whichcontained the record of a famous Frenchman's experiments, and thetwo hung over it together in David's little back room, till thedoctor's views of booksellers and their probable minds weresomewhat enlarged, and David felt something of the old intellectualglow which these scientific problems of mind and matter hadawakened in him during the winter. Then he walked his physician offto Daddy during the dinner hour and boldly introduced him as afriend. The young doctor, having been forewarned, treated thesituation admirably, took up a jaunty and jesting tone, and, finally, putting morals entirely aside, invited Daddy to considerhimself as a scientific case, and deal with himself as such for thebenefit of knowledge. 

Daddy was feeling ill and depressed; David struck him as an'impudent varmint, ' and the doctor as little better; but the lad'ssolicitude nevertheless flattered the old featherbrain, and in theend he fell into a burst of grandiloquent and self-excusingconfidence. The doctor played him; prescribed; and when he andDavid left together it really seemed as though the old man fromsheer curiosity about and interest in his own symptoms wouldprobably make an attempt to follow the advice given him. 

Dora came in while the three were still joking and discussing. Herface clouded as she listened, and when David and the doctor leftshe gave them a cool and shrinking good bye which puzzled David. 

Daddy, however, after a little while, mended considerably, developed an enthusiasm for his self-appointed doctor, and, whatwas still better, a strong excitement about his own affairs. Whenit came to the stage of a loan for the meeting of the more pressingliabilities, of fresh and ingenious efforts to attract customers, and of a certain gleam of returning prosperity, David's concern forhis old friend very much dropped again. His former vivid interestin the human scene and the actors in it, as such, was not yetrecovered; in these weeks weariness and lassitude overtook eachreviving impulse and faculty in turn. 

He was becoming more and more absorbed, too, by the news fromFrance. Its first effect upon him was one of irritable repulsion. Barbier and Hugo had taught him to loathe the Empire; and had nothe and she read _Les Chatiments_ together, and mocked theEmperor's carriage as it passed them in the streets? The Frenchtelegrams in the English papers, with their accounts of thevapouring populace, the wild rhetoric in the Chamber, and thegeneral outburst of _fanfaronnade_, seemed to make the Frenchnation one with the Empire in its worst aspects, and, as we can allremember, set English teeth on edge. David devoured the papers dayby day, and his antagonism grew, partly because, in spite of thatstrong gravitation of his mind towards things expansive, emotional, and rhetorical, the essential paste of him was not French butEnglish--but mostly because of other and stronger reasons of whichhe was hardly conscious. During that fortnight of his agony inParis all that sympathetic bond between the great city and himselfwhich had been the source of so much pleasure and excitement to himduring his early days with Elise had broken down. The glamour ofhappiness torn away, he had seen, beneath the Paris of his dream, agreedy brutal Paris from which his sick senses shrank in fear andloathing. The grace, the spell, was gone--he was alone andmiserable!--and amid the gaiety, the materialism, the selfish viceof the place he had moved for days, an alien and an enemy, the lovewithin him turning to hate. 

So now his mortal pain revenged itself. They would be beaten--thisdepraved and enervated people!--and his feverish heart rejoiced. But Elise? His lips quivered. What did the war matter to her exceptso far as its inconveniences were concerned? What had _lapatrie_ any more than _l'amour_ to do with art? He put thequestion to her in his wild evening walks. It angered him that asthe weeks swept on, and the great thunderbolts began tofall--Wissembourg, Forbach, Worth--his imagination would sometimesshow her to him agitated and in tears. No pity for him! why thissorrow for France? Absurd! let her go paint while the world lovedand fought. In '48, while monarchy and republic were wrestling itout in the streets of Paris, was not the landscape painterChintreuil quietly sketching all the time just outside one of thegates of the city? There was the artist for you. 

Meanwhile the growing excitement of the war, heightened andpoisoned by this reaction of his personality, combined with hispainful efforts to recover his business to make him for a time morepale and gaunt than ever. Ancrum remonstrated in vain. He would gohis way. 

One evening--it was the day after Worth--he was striding blindly upthe Oxford Road when he ran against a man at the corner of a sidestreet. It was Barbier, coming out for the last news. 

Barbier started, swore, caught him by the arm, then fell back inamazement. 

'_C'est toi? bon Dieu!_'

David, who had hitherto avoided his old companion with the utmostingenuity, began hurriedly to inquire whether he was going to lookat the evening's telegram. 

'Yes--no--what matter? You can tell me. David, my lad, Ancrum toldme you had been ill, but--'

The old man slipped his arm through that of the youth and looked athim fixedly. His own face was all furrowed and drawn, the eyes red. 

'_Oui; tu es change_, ' he said at last with a suddenquivering breath, almost a sob, 'like everything, --like the world!'

And hanging down his head he drew the lad on, down the littlestreet, towards his lodging. 

'Come in! I'll ask no questions. Oh, come in! I have the Frenchpapers; for three hours I have been reading them alone. Come in orI shall go mad!'

And they discussed the war, the political prospect, and Barbier'sFrench letters till nearly midnight. All the exile's nationalityhad revived, and so lost was he in weeping over France he hadscarcely breath left wherewith to curse the Empire. In the presenceof a grief so true, so poignant, wherein all the man's littletricks and absurdities had for the moment melted out of sight, David's own seared and bitter feeling could find no voice. He saidnot a word that could jar on his old friend. And Barbier, like achild, took his sympathy for granted and abused the 'heartlesshypocritical' English press to him with a will. 

The days rushed on. David read the English papers in town, thenwalked up late to Barbier's lodgings to read a French batch andtalk. Gravelotte was over, the siege was approaching. In thatstrange inner life of his, David with Elise beside him looked on atthe crashing trees in the Bois de Boulogne, at the long lines ofcarts laden with household stuff and fugitives from the _zonemilitaire_ flocking into Paris, at the soldiers and horsescamping in the Tuileries Gardens, at the distant smoke-clouds amidthe woods of Issy and Meudon, as village after village flamed toruins. 

One night--it was a day or two after Sedan--in a corner of theConstitutionnel, he found a little paragraph:--

'M. Henri Regnault and M. Clairin, leaving their studio at Tangiersto the care of the French Consul, have returned to Paris to offerthemselves for military service, from which, as holder of the_prix de Rome_, M. Regnault is legally exempt. To praise suchan act would be to insult its authors. France--our bleeding France!--does but take stern note that her sons are faithful. '

David threw the paper down, made an excuse to Barbier, and wentout. He could not talk to Barbier, to whom everything must beexplained from the beginning, and his heart was full. He wanderedout towards Fallowfield under a moon which gave beauty and magiceven to these low, begrimed streets, these jarring, incongruousbuildings, thinking of Regnault and that unforgotten night besidethe Seine. The young artist's passage through the Louvre, thetowering of his great head above the crowd in the 'Trois Rats, ' andthat outburst under the moonlight--everything, every tone, everydetail, returned upon him. 

'_The great France--the undying France--_'

And now for France--ah!--David divined the eagerness, the passion, with which it had been done. He was nearer to the artist than hehad been two months before--nearer to all great and tragic things. His recognition of the fact had in it the start of a strange joy. 

So moved was he, and in such complex ways, that as he thought ofRegnault with that realising imagination which was his gift, thewhole set of his feeling towards France and the war wavered andchanged. The animosity, the drop of personal gall in his heart, disappeared, conjured by Regnault's look, by Regnault's act. Theone heroic figure he had seen in France began now to stand to himfor the nation. He walked home doing penance in his heart, passionately renewing the old love, the old homage, in this awfulpresence of a stricken people at bay. 

And Elise came to him, in the moonlight, leaning upon him, withsoft, approving eyes--

Ah! where was she--where--in this whirlwind of the national fate?where was her frail life hidden? was she still in this Paris, sosoon to be 'begirt with armies'?

 * * * * *

Four days later Barbier sent a note to Ancrum: 'Come and see me thisafternoon at six o'clock. Say nothing to Grieve. '

A couple of hours afterwards Ancrum came slowly home to BirminghamStreet, where he was still lodging. David had just put up theshop-shutters, John had departed, and his employer was about toretire to supper and his books in the back kitchen. 

Ancrum went in and stood with his back to the fire which John hadjust made for the kettle and the minister's tea, when David came inwith an armful of books and shut the door behind him. Ancrum lethim put down his cargo, and then walked up to him. 

'David, ' he said, laying his hand with a timid gesture on theother's shoulder, 'Barbier has had some letters from Paristo-day--the last he will get probably--and among them a letter fromhis nephew. '

David started, turned sharp round, shaking off the hand. 

'It contains some news which Barbier thinks you ought to know. Mademoiselle Elise Delaunay has married suddenly--married hercousin, Mr. Pimodan, a young doctor. '

The shock blanched every atom of colour from David's face. He triedwildly to control himself, to brave it out with a desperate 'Whynot?' But speech failed him. He walked over to the mantelpiece andleant against it. The room swam with him, and the only impressionof which for a moment or two he was conscious was that of thecheerful singing of the kettle. 

'She would not leave Paris, ' said Ancrum in a low voice, standingbeside him. 'People tried to persuade her--nothing would induce her. Then this young man, who is said to have been in love with her foryears, urged her to marry him--to accept his protection really, inview of all that might come. Dubois thinks she refused severaltimes, but anyway two days ago they were married, civilly, withonly the legal witnesses. '

David moved about the various things on the mantelpiece withrestless fingers. Then he straightened himself. 

'Is that all?' he asked, looking at the minister. 

'All, ' said Ancrum, who had, of course, no intention of repeatingany of Dubois' playful embroideries on the facts. 'You will be glad, won't you, that she should have some one to protect her in such astrait?'--he added, after a minute's pause, his eyes on the fire. 

'Yes, ' said the other after a moment. 'Thank you. Won't you haveyour tea?'

Mr. Ancrum swallowed his emotion, and they sat down to table insilence. David played with some food, took one thing up afteranother, laid it down, and at last sprang up and seized his hat. 

'Going out again?' asked the minister, trembling, he knew not why. 

The lad muttered something. Instinctively the little lame fellow, who was closest to the door, rushed to it and threw himself againstit. 

'David, don't--don't go out alone--let me go with you!'

'I want to go out alone, ' said David, his lips shaking. 'Why do youinterfere with me?'

'Because--' and the short figure drew itself up, the minister'svoice took a stern deep note, 'because when a man has oncecontemplated the sin of self-murder, those about him have no rightto behave as though he were still like other innocent and happypeople!'

David stood silent a moment, every limb trembling. Then his mouthset, and he made a step forward, one arm raised. 

'Oh, yes!' cried Ancrum, 'you may fling me out of the way. Myweakness and deformity are no match for you. Do, if you have theheart! Do you think I don't know that I rescued you fromdespair--that I drew you out of the very jaws of death? Do youthink I don't guess that the news I have just given you wither theheart in your breast? You imagine, I suppose, that because I amdeformed and a Sunday-school teacher, because I think something ofreligion, and can't read your French books, I cannot enter intowhat a _man_ is and feels. Try me! When you were a little boyin my class, _my_ life was already crushed in me--my tragedywas over. I have come close to passion and to sin; I'm not afraidof yours! You are alive here tonight, David Grieve, because I wentto look for you on the mountains--lost sheep that you were--andfound you, by God's mercy. You never thanked me--I knew youcouldn't. Instead of your thanks I demand your confidence, here--now. Break down this silence between us. Tell me what youhave done to bring your life to this pass. You have no father--Ispeak in his place and I _deserve_ that you should trust andlisten to me!'

David looked at him with amazement--at the worn misshapen headthrown haughtily back--at the arms folded across the chest. Thenhis pride gave way, and that intolerable smart within could nolonger hide itself. His soul melted within him; tears began torain over his cheeks. He tottered to the fire and sat down, instinctively spreading his hands to the blaze, that word 'father'echoing in his ears; and by midnight Mr. Ancrum knew all the story, or as much of it as man could to tell to man. 

From this night of confession and of storm there emerged at leastone result--the beginnings of a true and profitable bond betweenDavid and Ancrum. Hitherto there had been expenditure of interestand affection on the minister's side, and a certain responsivenessand friendly susceptibility on David's; but no true understandingand contact, mind with mind. But in these agitated hours of suchtalk as belongs only to the rare crises of life, not only didAncrum gain an insight into David's inmost nature, with all itsrich, unripe store of feelings and powers, deeper than any he hadpossessed before, but David, breaking through the crusts ofassociation, getting beyond and beneath the Sunday-school teacherand minister, came for the first time upon the real man in hisfriend, apart from trappings--cast off the old sense of pupilage, and found a brother instead of a monitor. 

There came a moment when Ancrum, laying his hand on David's knee, told his own story in a few bare sentences, each of them, as itwere, lightning on a dark background, revealing some few thingswith a ghastly plainness, only to let silence and mystery closeagain upon the whole. And there came another moment when the littleminister, carried out of himself, fell into incoherent sentences, full of obscurity, yet often full of beauty, in which for the firsttime David came near to the living voice of religion speaking inits purest, intensest note. Christ was the burden of it all; thereligion of pain, sacrifice, immortality; the religion of chastityand self-repression. 

'Life goes from test to test, David; it's like any otherbusiness--the more you know the more's put on you. And this test ofthe man with the woman--there's no other cuts so deep. Aye, itparts the sheep from the goats. A man's failed in it--lost hisfooting--rolled into hell, before he knows where he is. "On thisstone if a man fall"--I often put those words to it--there's allmeanings in Scripture. Yes, you've stumbled, David--stumbled badly, but not more. There's mercy in it! You must rise again--you can. Accept yourself; accept the sin even; bear with yourself and goforward. That's what the Church says. Nothing can be undone, butbreak your pride, do penance, and all can be forgiven. 

'But you don't admit the sin? A man has a right to the satisfactionof his own instincts. You asked a free consent and got it. What islaw but a convention for miserable people who don't know how tolove? Who was injured?

'David, that's the question of a fool. Were you and she the firstman and woman in the world that ever loved? That's always the way;each man imagines the matter is still for his deciding, and he canno more decide it than he can tamper with the fact that fire burnsor water drowns. All these centuries the human animal has foughtwith the human soul. And step by step the soul has registered hervictories. She has won them only by feeling for the law and findingit--uncovering, bringing into light, the firm rocks beneath herfeet. And on these rocks she rears her landmarks--marriage, thefamily, the State, the Church, Neglect them, and you sink into thequagmire from which the soul of the race has been for generationsstruggling to save you. Dispute them! overthrow them--yes, if youcan! You have about as much chance with them as you have with theother facts and laws amid which you live--physical or chemical orbiological. 

'I speak after the manner of men. If I were to speak after themanner of a Christian, I should say other things. I should ask howa man _dare_ pluck from the Lord's hand, for his own wild andreckless use, a soul and body for which He died; how he, the Lord'sbondsman, _dare_ steal his joy, carrying it off by himselfinto the wilderness, like an animal his prey, instead of askingit at the hands, and under the blessing, of his Master; how he_dare_--a man under orders, and member of the Lord's body--forgetthe whole in his greed for the one--eternity in his thirst forthe present. '

'But no matter. Christ is nothing to you, nor Scripture, nor theChurch--'

The minister broke off abruptly, his lined face working withemotion and prayer. David said nothing. In this stage of theconversation--the stage, as it were, of judgment and estimate--hecould take no part. The time for it with him had not yet come. Hehad exhausted all his force in the attempt to explain himself--anattempt which began in fragmentary question and answer, and endedon his part in the rush of a confidence, an 'Apologia, 'representing, in truth, that first reflex action of the mind uponexperience, whence healing and spiritual growth were ultimately toissue. But for the moment he could carry the process no farther. Hesat crouched over the flickering fire, saying nothing, lettingAncrum soliloquise as he pleased. His mind surged to and fro, indeed, as Ancrum talked between the poles of repulsion andresponse. His nature was not as Ancrum's, and every now and thenthe quick critical intellect flashed through his misery, detectingan assumption, probing an hypothesis. But in general his_feeling_ gave way more and more. That moral sensitiveness inhim which in its special nature was a special inheritance, theoutcome of a long individualist development under the conditions ofEnglish Protestantism, made him from the first the natural prey ofAncrum's spiritual passion. As soon as a true contact between themwas set up, David began to feel the religious temper and life inAncrum draw him like a magnet. Not the forms of the thing, but thething itself. In it, or something like it, as he listened, hisheart suspected, for the first time, the only possible refuge fromthe agony of passion, the only possible escape from this fever ofdesire, jealousy, and love, in which he was consumed. 

At the end he let Ancrum lead him up to bed and give him thebromide the Paris doctor had prescribed. When Ancrum softly put hishead in, half an hour later, he was heavily asleep. Ancrum's facegleamed; he stole into the room carrying a rug and a pillow; andwhen David woke in the morning it was to see the twisted form ofthe little minister stretched still and soldierlike beside him onthe floor. 

CHAPTER XIV

From that waking David rose and went about his work another man. Ashe moved about in the shop or in the streets, he was conscious of agulf between his present self and his self of yesterday, which hecould hardly explain. Simply the whole atmosphere and temperatureof the soul was other, was different. He could have almost supposedthat some process had gone on within him during the unconsciousnessof sleep, of which he was now feeling the results; which hadcarried him on, without his knowing it, to a point in the highroadof life, far removed from that point where he had stood when histalk with Ancrum began. That world of enervating illusion, that'kind of ghastly dreaminess, 'as John Sterling called it, in whichsince his return he had lived with Elise, was gone, he knew nothow--swept away like a cloud from the brain, a mist from the eyes. The sense of catastrophe, of things irrevocable and irreparable, the premature ageing of the whole man, remained-only the fever andthe restlessness were past. Memory, indeed, was not affected. Insome sort the scenes of his French experience would be throughouthis life a permanent element in consciousness; but the personsconcerned in them were dead-creatures of the past. He himself hadbeen painfully re-born, and Pimodan's wife had no present personalexistence for him. He turned himself deliberately to his old life, and took up the interests of it again one by one, but, as he soondiscovered, with an insight, a power, a comprehension which hadnever yet been his. A moral and spiritual life destined to a richdevelopment practically began for him with this winter--this awfulwinter of the agony of France. 

His thoughts were often occupied now with Louie, but in a sanerway. He could no longer, without morbidness, take on himself thewhole responsibility of her miserable marriage. Human beings afterall are what they make themselves. But the sense of his own sharein it, and the perception of what her future life was likely to be, made him steadily accept beforehand the claims upon him which shewas sure to press. 

He had written to her early in September, when the siege wasimminent, offering her money to bring her to England, and theprotection of his roof during the rest of the war. And by a stilllater post than that which brought the news of Elise's marriagearrived a scrawl from Louie, written from a country town nearToulouse, whither she and Montjoie had retreated--apparently thesculptor's native place. 

The letter was full of complaints--complaints of the war, which wasbeing mismanaged by a set of rogues and fools who deservedstringing to the nearest tree; complaints of her husband, who was agood-for-nothing brute; and complaints of her own health. She wasexpecting her confinement in the spring; if she got throughit--which was not likely, considering the way in which she wastreated--she should please herself about staying with such a man. _He_ should not keep her for a day if she wanted to go. Meanwhile David might send her any money he could spare. There wasnot much of the six hundred left--_that_ she could tell him;and she could not even screw enough for baby-clothes out of herhusband. Very likely there would not be enough to pay for a nursewhen her time came. Well, then she would be out of it--and a goodjob too. 

She wished to be remembered to Dora; and Dora was especially to betold again that she needn't suppose St. Damian's was a patch on thereal Catholic churches, because it wasn't. She--Louie--had been atthe Midnight Mass in Toulouse Cathedral on Christmas Eve. That wassomething like. And down in the crypt they had a 'Bethlehem'--thesweetest thing you ever saw. There were the shepherds, and the wisemen, and the angels--dolls, of course, but their dresses weresplendid, and the little Jesus was dressed in white satin, embroidered with gold--_old_ embroidery, tell Dora. 

To this David had replied at once, sending money he could illspare, and telling her to keep him informed of her whereabouts. 

But the months passed on, and no more news arrived. He wrote again_via_ Bordeaux, but with no result, and could only waitpatiently till that eagle's grip, in which all French life wasstifled, should be loosened. 

Meanwhile his relation to another human being, whose life had beenaffected by the French episode, passed into a fresh phase. Two daysafter the news of Elise's marriage had reached him, he and John hadjust shut up the shop, and the young master was hanging over thecounter under the gas, heavily conning a not very satisfactorybusiness account. 

John came in, took his hat and stick from a corner, and threw Davida gruff 'good night. '

Something in the tone struck David's sore nerves like a blow. Heturned abruptly--

'Look here, John! I can't stand this kind of thing much longer. Hadn't we better part? You've learnt a lot here, and I'll see youget a good place. You--you rub it in too long!'

John stood still, his big rough hands beginning to shake, his pinkcheeks turning a painful crimson. 

'You--you never said a word to me!' he flung out at last, incoherently, resentfully. 

'Said a word to you? What do you mean? I told you the truth, and Iwould have told you more, if you hadn't turned against me as thoughI had been the devil himself. Do you suppose you are the onlyperson who came to grief because of that French time? _Good God!_'

The last words came out with a low exasperation. The young manleant against the counter, looking at his assistant with bitter, indignant eyes. 

John first shrank from them, then his own were drawn to meet them. Even his slow perceptions, thus challenged, realised something ofthe truth. He gave way--as David might have made him give way longbefore, if his own misery had not made him painfully avoid anyfresh shock of speech. 

'Well!' said John, slowly, with a mighty effort; 'I'll not lay itagen you any more. I'll say that. But if you want to get rid of me, you can. Only you'll be put to 't wi' t' printing. '

The two young fellows surveyed each other. Then suddenly Davidsaid, pushing him to the door:

'You're a great ass, John--get out, and good night to you. '

But next day the atmosphere was cleared, and, with inexpressiblerelief on both sides, the two fell back into the old brotherlyrelation. Poor John! He kept an old photograph of Louie in a drawerat his lodging, and, when he came home to bed, would alternatelyweep over and denounce it. But, all the same, his interest inDavid's printing ventures was growing keener and keener, andwhenever business had been particularly exciting during the day, the performance with the photograph was curtailed or omitted atnight. Let no scorn, however, be thought, on that account, of thetrue passion!--which had thriven on unkindness, and did but yieldto the slow mastery of time. 

The war thundered on. To Manchester, and to the cotton and silkindustries of Lancashire generally, the tragedy of France meant onthe whole a vast boom in trade. So many French rivals crippled--somuch ground set free for English enterprise to capture--and, meanwhile, high profits for a certain number at least of Manchesterand Macclesfield merchants, and brisk wages for the Lancashireoperatives, especially for the silk-weavers. This, with of coursecertain drawbacks and exceptions, was the aspect under which thewar mainly presented itself to Lancashire. Meanwhile, amid theseteeming Manchester streets with their clattering lurries andoverflowing warehouses, there was at least one Englishman who tookthe war hardly, in whom the spectacle of its wreck and struggleroused a feeling which was all moral, human, disinterested. 

What was Regnault doing? David kept a watch on the newspapers, ofwhich the Free Library offered him an ample store; but there was nomention of him in the English press that he could discover, andBarbier, of course, got nothing now from Paris. 

Christmas was over. The last month of the siege, that hideousJanuary of frost and fire, rushed past, with its alternations offamine within and futile battle without--Europe looking on appalledat this starved and shivering Paris, into which the shells wereraining. At last--the 27th!--the capitulation! All was over; theGerman was master in Europe, and France lay at the feet of herconqueror. 

Out to all parts streamed the letters which had been so longdelayed. Barbier and David, walking together one bitter eveningtowards Barbier's lodgings, silent, with hanging heads, met thepostman on Barbier's steps, who held out a packet. The Frenchmantook it with a cry; the two rushed upstairs and fell upon theletters and papers it contained. 

There--while Barbier sat beside him, groaning over the conditionsof peace, over the enthronement of the Emperor-King at Versailles, within sight of the statue of Louis Quatorze, now cursing '_cesimbeciles du gouvernement!_' and now wiping the tears from hisold cheeks with a trembling hand--David read the news of the fightof Buzenval, and the death of Regnault. 

It seemed to him that he had always foreseen it--that from the verybeginning Regnault's image in his thought had been haloed with alight of tragedy and storm--a light of death. His eyes devoured thelong memorial article in which a friend of Regnault's had given thedetails of his last months of life. Barbier, absorbed in his owngrief, heard not a sound from the corner where his companion satcrouched beneath the gas. 

Everything--the death and the manner of it--was to him, as it were, in the natural order--fitting, right, such as might have beenexpected. His heart swelled to bursting as he read, but his eyeswere dry. 

This, briefly, was the story which he read. 

Henri Regnault re-entered Paris at the beginning of September. Bythe beginning of October he was on active service, stationed now atAsnieres, now at Colombes. In October or November he became engagedto a young girl, with whom he had been for long devotedly inlove--ah! David thought of that sudden smile--the 'open door'!Their passion, cherished under the wings of war, did but givecourage and heroism to both. Yet he loved most humanly! Onenight, in an interval of duty, on leaving the house where his_fiancee_ lived, he found the shells of the bombardment fallingfast in the street outside. He could not make up his mind togo--might not ruin befall the dear house with its inmates at anymoment? So he wandered up and down outside for hours in the bitternight, watching, amid the rattle of the shells and the terrifiedcries of women and children from the houses on either side. At last, worn out and frozen with cold, but still unable toleave the spot, he knocked softly at the door he had left. The_concierge_ came. 'Let me lie down awhile on your floor. Tellno one. ' Then, appeased by this regained nearness to her, and bythe sense that no danger could strike the one without warning theother, he wrapped himself in his soldier's cloak and fell asleep. 

In November he painted his last three water-colours--visions of theEast, painted for her, and as flower-bright as possible, 'becauseflowers were scarce' in the doomed city. 

December came. Regnault spent Christmas night at the advanced postof Colombes. His captain wished to make him an officer. 'Thanks, mycaptain, ' said the young fellow of twenty-three; 'but if you have agood soldier in me, why exchange him for an indifferent officer? Myexample will be of more use to you than my commission. ' Meanwhilethe days and nights were passed in Arctic cold. Men were frozen todeath round about him; his painter's hand was frostbitten. 'Oh! Ican speak with authority on cold!' he wrote to his _fiancee_;'this morning at least I know what it is to spend the night on thehard earth exposed to a glacial wind. Enough! _Je me rechaufferaia votre foyer_. I love you--I love my country--that sustains. Adieu!'

On the 17th, after a few days in Paris spent with her and some oldfriends, he was again ordered to the front. On Thursday the fightat Buzenval began with a brilliant success; in the middle of theday his _fiancee_ still had news of him, brought by a servant. Night fell. The battle was hottest in a wood adjoining the park ofBuzenval. Regnault and his painter-comrade Clairin were side byside. Suddenly the retreat was sounded, and the same instantClairin missed his friend. He sought him with frenzy amid the treesin the darkening wood, called to him, peered into the faces of thedying--no answer! Ah! he must have been swept backwards by the rushof the retreat--Clairin will find him again. 

Three days later the lost was found--one among two hundred corpsesof National Guards carted into Pere Lachaise. Clairin, mad withgrief, held his friend in his arms--held, kissed the beautifulhead, now bruised and stained past even _her_ knowing, withits bullet-wound in the temple. 

On his breast was found a medal with a silver tear hanging from it. She who had long worn it as a symbol of bereavement, in memory ofdear ones lost to her, had given it to him in her first joy. 'I willreclaim it, ' she had said, smiling, 'the first time you make meweep!' It was all that was brought back to her--all except ascrawled paper found in his pocket, containing some hurried andalmost illegible words, written perhaps beside his outpost fire. 

'We have lost many men--we must remakethem--_better_--_stronger_. The lesson should profit us. No more lingering amid facile pleasures! Who dare now live forhimself alone? It has been for too long the custom with us tobelieve in nothing but enjoyment and all bad passions. We haveprided ourselves on despising everything good and worthy. No moreof such contempt!'

Then--so the story ended--four days later, on the very day of thecapitulation of Paris, Regnault was carried to his last rest. Afigure in widow's dress walked behind. And to many standing by, amid the muffled roll of the drums and the wailing of the music, itwas as though France herself went down to burial with her son. 

David got up gently and went across to Barbier, who was sittingwith his letters and papers before him, staring and stupefied, thelower jaw falling, in a trance of grief. 

The young man put down the newspaper he had been reading in frontof the old man. 

'Read that some time; it will give you something to be proud of. Itold you I knew him--he was kind to me. '

Barbier nodded, not understanding, and sought for his spectacleswith shaking fingers. David quietly went out. 

He walked home in a state of exaltation like a man still environedwith the emotion of great poetry or great music. He said verylittle about Regnault in the days that followed to Ancrum orBarbier, even to Dora, with whom every week his friendship wasdeepening. But the memory of the dead man, as it slowly shapeditself in his brooding mind, became with him a permanent andfruitful element of thought. Very likely the Regnault whom herevered, whose name was henceforth a sacred thing to him, was onlypart as it were of the real Regnault. He saw the French artist withan Englishman's eyes--interpreted him in English ways--the ways, moreover, of a consciousness self-taught and provincial, howevergifted and flexible. Only one or two aspects, no doubt, of thatrich, self-tormented nature, reared amid the most complex movementsof European intelligence, were really plain to him. And thoseaspects were specially brought home to him by his own mentalcondition. No matter. Broadly, essentially, he understood. 

But thenceforward, just as Elise Delaunay had stood to him in thebeginning for French art and life, and that ferment in himselfwhich answered to them, so now in her place stood Regnault withthose stern words upon his young and dying lips--'We have lost manymen--we must remake them--better! Henceforward let no one dare liveunto himself. ' The Englishman took them into his heart, thatethical fibre in him, which was at last roused and dominant, vibrating, responding. And as the poignant images of death andbattle faded he saw his hero always as he had seen him last--young, radiant, vigorous, pointing to the dawn behind Notre-Dame. 

All life looked differently to David this winter. He saw theManchester streets and those who lived in them with otherperceptions. His old political debating interests, indeed, werecomparatively slack; but persons--men and women, and theirstories--for these he was instinctively on the watch. His eyenoticed the faces he passed as it had never yet done--divined inthem suffering, or vice, or sickness. All that he saw at thismoment he saw tragically. The doors set open about him were still, as Keats, himself hurried to his end by an experience of passion, once expressed it, 'all dark, ' and leading to darkness. There weretimes when Dora's faith and Ancrum's mysticism drew himirresistibly; other times when they were almost as repulsive to himas they had ever been, because they sounded to him like the formulaof people setting out to explain the world 'with a light heart, ' asOllivier had gone to war. 

But whether or no it could be explained, this world, he could notnow help putting out his hand to meddle with and mend it; his mindfed on its incidents and conditions. The mill-girls standing on theAncoats pavements; the drunken lurryman tottering out from thepublic-house to his lurry under the biting sleet of February; theragged barefoot boys and girls swarming and festering in the slums;the young men struggling all about him for subsistence andsuccess--these for the first time became realities to him, enteredinto that pondering of 'whence and whither' to which he had beenalways destined, and whereon he was now consciously started. 

And as the months went on, his attention was once more painfullycaught and held by Dora's troubles and Daddy's infirmities. ForDaddy's improvement was short-lived. A bad relapse came inNovember; things again went downhill fast; the loan contracted inthe summer had to be met, and under the pressure of it Daddy onlybecame more helpless and disreputable week by week. And now, whenDoctor Mildmay went to see him, Daddy, crouching over the fire, pretended to be deaf, and 'soft' besides. Nothing could be got outof him except certain grim hints that his house was his own till hewas turned out of it. 'Looks pretty bad this time, ' said the doctorto David once as he came out discomfited. 'After all, there's notmuch hope when the craving returns on a man of his age, especiallyafter some years' interval. '

Daddy would sometimes talk frankly enough to David. At such timeshis language took an exasperating Shakespearean turn. He wasabominably fond of posing as Lear or Jaques--as a man muchbuffeted, and acquainted with all the ugly secrets of life. Purcellstood generally for 'the enemy;' and to Purcell his half-mad fancyattributed most of his misfortunes. It was Purcell who hadundermined his business, taken away his character, and driven himback to drink. David did not believe much of it, and told him so. Then, roused to wrath, the young man would speak his mind plainlyas to Dora's sufferings and Dora's future. But to very littlepurpose. 

'Aye, you're right--you're right enough, ' said the old man to himon one of these occasions, with a wild, sinister look. 'Cordelia'llhang for 't. If you want to do her any good, you must turn old Learout--send him packing, back to the desert where he was before. There's elbow-room there!'

David looked up startled. The thin bronzed face had a restlessflutter in it. Before he could reply Daddy had laid a hand on hisshoulder. 

'Davy, why don't you drink?'

'What do you mean?' said the young man, flushing. 

'Davy, you've been as close as wax; but Daddy can see a thing ortwo when he chooses. Ah, you should drink, my lad. Let peopleprate--why shouldn't a man please himself? It's not the beastlyliquor--that's the worst part of it--it's the _dreams, _ mylad, "the dreams that come. " They say ether does the businesscheapest. A teaspoonful--and you can be alternately in Paradise andthe gutter four times a day. But the fools here don't know how tomix it. '

As he spoke the door opened, and there stood Dora on the threshold. She had just come back from a Lenten service; her little wornprayer-book was in her hand. She stood trembling, looking at themboth--at David's tight, indignant lips--at her father's excitement. 

Daddy's eye fell on her prayer-book, and David, looking up, saw aquick cloud of distaste, aversion, pass over his weird face. 

She put out some supper, and pressed David to stay. He did so inthe vain hope of keeping Daddy at home. But the old vagrant was tooclever for both of them. When David at last got up to go, Daddyaccompanied him downstairs, and stood in the doorway looking upMarket Place till David had disappeared in the darkness. Then witha soft and cunning hand he drew the door to behind him, and stood amoment lifting his face to the rack of moonlit cloud scuddingacross the top of the houses opposite. As he did so, he drew a longbreath, with the gesture of one to whom the wild airs of that uppersky, the rush of its driving wind, were stimulus and delight. Thenhe put down his head and stole off to the right, towards the oldWhite Inn in Hanging Ditch, while Dora was still listening inmisery for his return step upon the stairs. 

A week later Dora, not knowing how the restaurant could be keptgoing any longer, and foreseeing utter bankruptcy and ruin as soonas the shutters should be up, took her courage in both hands, swallowed all pride, and walked up to Half Street to beg help ofPurcell. After all he was her mother's brother. In spite of thatlong feud between him and Daddy, he would surely, for his owncredit's sake, help them to escape a public scandal. For all hisrodomontade, Daddy had never done him any real harm that she couldremember. 

So she opened the shop door in Half Street, quaking at the sound ofthe bell she set in motion, and went in. 

Twenty minutes afterwards she came out again, looking from side toside like a hunted creature, her veil drawn close over her face. She fled on through Market Place, across Market Street and St. Ann's Square, and through the tall dark warehouse streetsbeyond--drawn blindly towards Potter Street and her only friend. 

David was putting out some books on the stall when he looked up andsaw her. Perceiving that she was weeping and breathless, he askedher into the back room, while John kept guard in the shop. 

There she leant against the mantelpiece, shaking from head to foot, and wiping away her tears. He soon gathered that she had been toPurcell, and that Purcell had dismissed her appeal with everycircumstance of cold and brutal insult. The sooner her father wasin the workhouse or the lunatic asylum, and she in some nunnery orother, the sooner each would be in their right place. He was avagabond, and she a Papist--let them go where they belonged. He wasnot going to spend a farthing of his hard-earned money to helpeither of them to impose any further on the world. And then he letfall a word or two which showed her that he had probably been atthe bottom of some merciless pressure lately applied to them by oneor two of their chief creditors. The bookseller's hour was come, and he was looking on at the hewing of his Agag with the joy of therighteous. So might the Lord avenge him of all his enemies. 

Dora could hardly give an account of it. The naked revelation ofPurcell's hate, of so hard and vindictive a soul, had worked uponher like some physical horror. She had often suspected the truth, but now that it was past doubting, the moral shock was terrible tothis tender mystical creature, whose heart by day and night lived ahidden life with the Crucified and with His saints. Oh, how couldhe, how could anyone, be so cruel? her father getting an old man!and she, who had never quarrelled with him--who had nursed Lucy! Soshe wailed, gradually recovering her poor shaken soul--calming it, indeed, all the while out of sight, with quick piteous words ofprayer and submission. 

David stood by, pale with rage and sympathy. But what could he do?He was himself in the midst of a hard struggle, and had neithermoney nor credit available. They parted at last, with theunderstanding that he was to go and consult Ancrum, and that shewas to go to her friends at St. Damian's. 

Till now poor Dora had carefully refrained from bringing herprivate woes into relation with her life in and through St. Damian's. Within that enchanted circle, she was another being withanother existence. There she had never asked anything for herself, except the pardon and help of God, before His altar, and throughHis priests. Rather she had given--given all that she had--hertime, such as she could spare from Daddy and her work, to theSunday-school and the sick; her hard-won savings on her clothes, and on the extra work, for which she would often sit up night afternight when Daddy believed her asleep, to the poor and to theservices of the Church. There she had a position, almost anauthority of her own--the authority which comes of self-spending. But now this innocent pride must be humbled. For the sake of herfather, and of those to whom they owed money they could not pay, she must go and ask--beg instead of giving. All she wanted wastime. Her embroidery work was now better paid than ever. If therestaurant were closed she could do more of it. In the end shebelieved she could pay everybody. But she must have time. Yes, shewould go to Father Vernon that night! He would understand, even ifhe could not help her. 

Alas! Next morning David was just going out to dinner, when amessage was brought him from Market Place. He started off thitherat a run, and found a white and gasping Dora wandering restlesslyup and down the upper room; while Sarah, the old Lancashire cook, very red and very tearful, followed her about trying to administerconsolation. Daddy had disappeared. After coming in about eleventhe night before and going noisily to his room--no doubt for thepurpose of deluding Dora--he must have stolen down again and madeoff without being either seen or heard by anybody. Even thepoliceman on duty in Market Place had noticed nothing. He had takenwhat was practically the only money left them in the world--abouttwenty pounds--from Dora's cashbox, and some clothes, packing theselast in a knapsack which still remained to him from the foreigntramps of years before. 

The efforts made by Dora, David, and Ancrum, whom David called into help, to track the fugitive, were quite useless. Daddy hadprobably disguised himself, for he had all the tricks of theadventurer, and could 'make up' in former days so as to deceiveeven his own wife. 

Strange outbreak of a secret ineradicable instinct! He had beenDora's for twenty years. But life with her at Leicester, and duringtheir first years at Manchester, had thriven too evenly, and in theend the old wanderer had felt his blood prick within him, and themania of his youth revive. His business had grown hateful to him;it was probably the comparative monotony of success which had firstreawakened the travel-hunger--then restlessness, conflict, leadingto drink, and, finally, escape. 

'He will come back, you know, ' said Dora one night, sharply, toDavid. 'He served my mother so many times. But he always came back. '

They were sitting together in the shuttered and dismantledrestaurant. There was to be a sale on the premises on the morrow, and the lower room had that day been filled with all the 'plant' ofthe restaurant, and all or almost all the poor household stuff fromupstairs. It was an odd, ramshackle collection; and poor Dora, whohad been walking round looking at the auction tickets, wasrealising with a sinking heart how much debt the sale would stillleave unprovided for. But she had found friends. Father Vernon hadmet the creditors for her. There had been a composition, and shehad insisted upon working off to the best of her power whatever summight remain after the possession and goodwill had been sold. Shecould live on a crust, and she was sure of continuous work both forthe great church-furniture shop in Manchester which had hithertoemployed her and also for the newly established School of ArtNeedlework at Kensington. As an embroideress there were few moredelicately trained eyes and defter hands than hers in England. 

When she spoke of her father's coming back, David was seized withpity. She could not sit down in these days when her work was out ofher hands. Perpetual movement seemed her only relief. The face, that seemed so featureless but was so expressive, had lost itssweet, shining look; the mouth had the pucker of pain; and she hadpiteous startled ways quite unlike her usual soft serenity. 

'Oh, yes, he will come back--some time, ' he said, to comfort her. 

'I don't doubt that--never. But I wonder how he could go likethat--how he had the heart! I did think he cared for me. I wasn'tever nasty to him--at least, I don't remember. Perhaps he thought Iwas. But only we two--and always together--since mother died!'

She began to tidy some of the lots, to tie some of the bundles ofodds and ends together more securely--talking all the while in abroken way. She was evidently bewildered and at sea. If she couldhave remembered any misconduct of her own, it seemed to David, itwould have been a relief to her. Her faith taught her that love wasall-powerful--but it had availed her nothing!

The sale came; and the goodwill of the Parlour was sold to a manwho was to make a solid success of what with Daddy had been ahalf-crazy experiment. 

Dora went to live in Ancoats, that teeming, squalid quarter whichlies but a stone's-throw from the principal thoroughfares andbuildings of Manchester, and in its varieties of manufacturing lifeand population presents types which are all its own. Here are thecotton operatives who work the small proportion of mills stillremaining within the bounds of Manchester--the spinners, minders, reelers, reed-makers, and the rest; here are the calico-printersand dyers, the warehousemen and lurrymen; and here too are thesellers of 'fents, ' and all the other thousand and one small tradesand occupations which live on and by the poor. The quarter has onebroad thoroughfare or lung, which on a sunny day is gay, sightly, and alive; then to north and south diverge the innumerable lowred-brick streets where the poor live and work; which have none, however, of the trim uniformity which belongs to the workers'quarters of the factory towns pure and simple. Manchester in itsworst streets is more squalid, more haphazard, more nakedly pooreven than London. Yet, for all that, Manchester is a city with acommon life, which London is not. The native Lancashire element, lost as it is beneath many supervening strata, is still there andpowerful; and there are strong well-defined characteristicinterests and occupations which bind the whole together. 

Here Dora settled with a St. Damian's girl friend, a shirt-maker. They lived over a sweetshop, in two tiny rooms, in a street evenmore miscellaneous and half-baked than its neighbours. Outside wasugliness; inside, unremitting labour. But Dora soon made herselfalmost happy. By various tender shifts she had saved out of thewreck in Market Place Daddy's bits of engravings and foreigncuriosities, his Swiss carvings and shells, his skins and stuffedbirds; very moth-eaten and melancholy these last, but still safe. There, too, was his chair; it stood beside the fire; he had but tocome back to it. Many a time in the week did she suddenly rise thatshe might go to the door and listen; or crane her head out ofwindow, agitated by a figure, a sound, as her mother had donebefore her. 

Then her religious life was free to expand as it had never beenyet. Very soon, in Passion Week, she and her friend had gathered aprayer-meeting of girls, hands from the mill at the end of thestreet. They came for twenty minutes in the dinner-hour, delicate-faced comely creatures many of them, with their shawlsover their heads: Dora prayed and sang with them, a soft tremulouspassion in every word and gesture. They thought her a saint--beganto tell her their woes and their sins. In the evenings and onSunday she lived in the coloured and scented church, with itsplaintive music, its luminous altar, its suggestions both of agreat encompassing church order of undefined antiquity and infinitefuture, and of a practical system full of support for individualweakness and guidance for the individual will. The beauty of theceremonial appealed to those instincts in her which found otherexpression in her glowing embroideries; and towards the churchorder, with its symbols, observances, mysteries, the now solitarygirl felt a more passionate adoration, a more profound humility, than ever before. Nothing too much could be asked of her. DuringLent, but for the counsels of Father Russell himself, a shrewd man, well aware that St. Damian's represented the one Anglican oasis inan incorrigibly moderate Manchester, even her serviceable andelastic strength would have given way, so hard she was to that poor'sister the body, ' which so many patient ages have gone to perfectand adjust. 

Half of the romance, the poetry of her life, lay here; the otherhalf in her constant expectation of her father, and in the visitsof David Grieve. Once a week at least David mounted to the littleroom where the two girls sat working; sometimes now, oh joy! hewent to church with her; sometimes he made her come out to Eccles, or Cheadle, or the Irwell valley for a walk. She used variousmaidenly arts and self-restraints to prevent scandal. At home shenever saw him alone, and she now never went to Potter Street. Still, out of doors they were often alone. There was noconcealment, and the persons who took notice assumed that they werekeeping company and going to be married. When such things were saidto Dora she met them with a sweet and quiet denial, at firstblushing, then with no change at all of look or manner. 

Yet the girl who lived with her knew that the first sound ofDavid's rap on the door below sent a tremor through the figurebeside her, that the slight hand would go up instinctively to thecoiled hair, straightening and pinning, and that the smiling, listening, sometimes disputing Dora who talked with David Grievewas quite different from the dreamy and ascetic Dora who sat besideher all day. 

Why did David go? As a matter of fact, with every month of thiswinter and spring, Dora's friendship became more necessary to him. All the brotherly feeling he would once so willingly have spent onLouie, he now spent on Dora. She became in truth a sister to him. He talked to her as he would have done to Louie had she been likeDora. No other relationship ever entered his mind; and he believedthat he was perfectly understood and met in the same way. 

Both often spoke of Lucy, towards whom David in this new and gravertemper felt both kindly and gratefully. She, poor child, wrote toDora from time to time letters full of complaints of her father andof his tyranny in keeping her away from Manchester. He indeedseemed to have taken a morbid dislike to his daughter, and whatcompany he wanted he got from the widow, whom yet he had never madeup his mind to marry. Lucy chafed and rebelled against theperpetual obstacles he placed in the way of her returning home, buthe threatened to make her earn her own living if she disobeyed him, and in the end she always submitted. She poured herself outbitterly, however, to Dora, and Dora was helplessly sorry for her, feeling that her idle wandering life with the various aunts andcousins she boarded with was excessively bad for her--seeing thatLucy was not of the stuff to fashion new duties or charities forherself out of new relations--and that the small, vain, and yetaffectionate nature ran an evil chance of ultimate barrenness andsourness. 

But what could she do? In every letter there was some mention ofDavid Grieve or request for news about him. About the visit toParis Dora had written discreetly, telling only what she knew, andnothing of what she guessed. In reality, as the winter passed on, Dora watched him more and more closely, waiting for the time whenthat French mystery, whatever it was, should have ceased toovershadow him, and she might once more scheme for Lucy. He mustmarry--that she knew!--whatever he might think. Anyone could seethat, with the returning spring, in spite of her friendship andAncrum's, he felt his loneliness almost intolerable. It was clear, too, as his manhood advanced, that he was naturally drawn to women, naturally dependent on them. In spite of his great intelligence, toher so formidable and mysterious, Dora had soon recognised, asElise had done, the eager, clinging, confiding temper of his youth. And beneath the transformation of passion and grief it was stillthere--to be felt moving often like a wounded thing. 

CHAPTER XV

It was a showery April evening. But as it was also a Saturday, Manchester took no heed at all of the weather. The streets werethronged. All the markets were ablaze with light, and full ofbuyers. In Market Place, Dora's old home, the covered glass boothsbeside the pavement brought the magic of the spring into the veryheart of the black and swarming town, for they were a fragrant showof daffodils, hyacinths, primroses, and palms. Their lights shoneout into the rainy mist of the air, on the glistening pavements, and on the faces of the cheerful chattering crowd, to which theshawled heads so common among the women gave the characteristicLancashire touch. Above rose the dark tower of the Exchange; on oneside was the Parlour, still dedicated to the kindly diet ofcorn--and fruit-eating men, but repainted, and launched on a freshcareer of success by Daddy's successor; on the other, the gabledand bulging mass of the old Fishing-tackle House, with a livelyfish and oyster traffic surging in the little alleys on either sideof it. 

Market Street, too, was thronged. In the great cheap shop at thehead of it, aflame with lights from top to base, you could see thebuyers story after story, swarming like bees in a glass hive. Farther on in the wide space of the Infirmary square, the omnibusesgathered, and a detachment of redcoats just returned fromrifle-practice on the moors crowded the pavement outside thehospital, amid an admiring escort of the youth of Manchester, whiletheir band played lustily. 

But especially in Peter Street, the street of the great publichalls and principal theatres, was Manchester alive and busy. Nilsson was singing at the 'Royal, ' and the rich folk were settingdown there in their broughams and landaus. But in the great FreeTrade Hall there was a performance of 'Judas Maccabeus' given bythe Manchester Philharmonic Society, and the vast place, filledfrom end to end with shilling and two-shilling seats, was crowdedwith the 'people. ' It was a purely local scene, unlike anything ofthe same kind in London, or any other capital. The performers onthe platform were well known to Manchester, unknown elsewhere;Manchester took them at once critically and affectionately, remembering their past, looking forward to their future; theSociety was one of which the town was proud; the conductor was acharacter, and popular; and half the audience at least was composedof the relations and friends of the chorus. Most people had a'Susan, ' an 'Alice, ' or a 'William' making signs to them atintervals from the orchestra; and when anything went particularlywell, and the applause was loud, the friends of Susan or Alicebeamed with a proprietary pride. 

Looking down upon this friendly cheerful throng sat David Grieve, high up in the balcony. It had been his wont of late to frequentthese cheap concerts, where as a rule, owing to the greater musicalsensitiveness of the English North as compared with the South, themusic is singularly good. During the past winter, indeed, musicmight almost be said to have become part of his life. He had notrue musical gift, but in the paralysis of many of his naturalmodes of expression which had overtaken him music supplied a need. In it he at least, and at this moment, found a voice and an emotionnot too personal or poignant. He lost himself in it, and wassoothed. 

Towards the beginning of the last part he suddenly with a startrecognised Lucy Purcell in the body of the hall. She was sittingwith friends whom he did not know, staring straight before her. Hebent forward and looked at her carefully. In a minute or two hedecided that she was looking tired, cross, and unhappy, and thatshe was not attending to the music at all. 

So at last her father had let her come home. As to her looks, to bedaughter to Purcell was to be sure of disagreeable living; andperhaps her future stepmother had been helping Purcell to annoyher. 

Poor little thing! David felt a strong wish to speak to her afterthe performance. Meanwhile he tried to attract her attention, butin vain. It seemed to him that she looked right along the bench onwhich he sat; but there was no flash in her face; it remained astired and frowning as before. 

He ran downstairs before the end of the last chorus, and placedhimself near the door by which he felt sure she would come out. Hewas just in time. She and her party also came out early before therush. There was a sudden crowd of people in the doorway, and thenhe heard a little cry. Lucy stood before him, flushed, pulling ather glove, and saying something incoherent. But before he couldunderstand she had turned back to the two women who accompanied herand spoken to them quickly; the elder replied, with a sour look atDavid; the younger laughed behind her muff. Lucy turned awaywilfully, and at that instant the crowd from within, surgingoutwards, swept them away from her, and she and David foundthemselves together. 

'Come down those steps there to the right, ' she said peremptorily. 'They are going the other way. '

By this time David himself was red. She hurried him into thestreet, however, and then he saw that she was breathing hard, andthat her hands were clasped together as though she were trying torestrain herself. 

'Oh, I am so unhappy!' she burst out, 'so unhappy! And it was all, you know, to begin with, because of you, Mr. Grieve! But oh! Iforgot you'd been ill--you look so different!'

She paused suddenly, while over her face there passed an expressionhalf startled, half shrinking, as of one who speaks familiarly, ashe supposes, to an old friend and finds a stranger. She could nottake her eyes off him. What was this new dignity, this indefinablechange of manner?

'I am not different, ' he said hastily, 'not in the least. So yourfather has never forgiven you the kindness you did me? I don't knowwhat to say, Miss Lucy. I'm both sorry and ashamed. '

'Forgiven it!--no, nor ever will, ' she said shortly, walking on, and forgetting everything but her woes. 'Oh, do listen! Come upOxford Street. I must tell some one, or I shall die! I must seeDora. Father's forbidden me to go, and I haven't had a moment tomyself yet. She hasn't written to me since she left the Parlour, and no one'll tell me where she is. And that _odious_ woman!Oh, she is an abominable wretch! She wants to claim all mythings--all the bits of things that were mother's, and I havealways counted mine. She won't let me take any of them away. Andshe's stolen a necklace of mine--yes, Mr. Grieve, _stolen_ it. I don't care _that_ about it--not in itself; but to have yourthings taken out of your drawers without "_With_ your leave"or "_By_ your leave"!--She's made father worse than ever. Ithought he had found her out, but he is actually going to marry herin July, and they won't let me live at home unless I make a solemnpromise to "perform my religious duties" and behave properly to thechapel people. And I never will, not if I starve for it--nasty, canting, crawling, backbiting things! Then father says I can liveaway, and he'll make me an allowance. And what do you think he'llallow me?'

She faced round upon him with curving lip and eyes aflame. Davidaverred truly that he could not guess. 

'Thirty--pounds--a--year!' she said with vicious emphasis. 'There--would you believe it? If you put a dirty little chit of anurse-girl on board wages, it would come to more than that. And hejust bought three houses in Millgate, and as rich as anything! Oh, it's shameful, I call it, _shameful!_'

She put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then she quickly withdrew itagain and turned to him, remembering how his first aspect hadsurprised her. In the glare of some shops they were passing Davidcould see her perfectly, and she him. Certainly, in the year whichhad elapsed since they had met she had ripened, or rather softened, into a prettier girl. Whether it was the milder Southern climate inwhich she had been living, or the result of physical weakness leftby her attack of illness in the preceding spring, at any rate herbloom was more delicate, the lines of her small, pronounced facemore finished and melting. As for her, now that she had paused amoment in her flow of complaint, she was busy puzzling out thechange in him. David became vaguely conscious of it, and tried toset her off again. 

'But you'd rather live away, ' he said, 'when they treat you likethat? You'd rather be independent, I should think? I would!'

'Oh, catch me living with that woman!' she cried passionately. 'She's no better than a thief, a common thief. I don't care whohears me. And _made up!_ Oh, its shocking! It seems to methere's nothing I can talk about at home now--whether it's gettingold--or teeth--or hair--I'm always supposed to be "passingremarks. " And I wouldn't mind if it was my Hastings cousins I hadto live with. But they can't have me any more, and now I'm atWakely with the Astons. '

'The Aston's?' David echoed. Like most people of small training andintelligence, Lucy instinctively supposed that whatever wasfamiliar to her was familiar to other people. 

'Oh, don't you know? It's father's sister who married amill-overseer at Wakely. And they're very kind to me. Only they're_dreadfully_ pious too--not like father--I don't mean that. And, you see--it's Robert!'

'Who's Robert?' asked David amused by her blush, and admiring thetrim lightness of her figure and walk. 

'Robert's the eldest son. He's a reedmaker. He's got enough tomarry on--at least he thinks so. '

'And he wants to marry you?'

She nodded. Then she looked at him, laughing, her naturally brighteyes sparkling through the tears still wet in them. 

'Father's a Baptist, you know--that's bad enough--but Robert'sa _Particular_ Baptist. I asked him what it meant once whenhe was pestering me to marry him. "Well, you see, " he said, "a man must _show_ that his heart's changed--we don't takein everybody like--we want to be _sure_ they're real _converted_. "I don't believe it does mean that--father says it doesn't. Anyway I asked him whether if I married him he'd want me to bea Particular Baptist too. And he said, very slow and solemn, that of course he should look for religious fellowship in hiswife, but that he didn't want to hurry me. I laughed till Icried at the thought of _me_ going to that hideous chapel ofhis, dressed like his married sister. But sometimes, I declare, Ithink he'll make me do what he wants--he's got a way with him. Hesticks to a thing as tight as wax, and I don't care what becomes ofme sometimes. '

She pouted despondently, but her quick eye stole to her companion'sface. 

'Oh, no, you won't marry Robert, Miss Lucy, ' said David cheerfully. 'You've had a will of your own ever since I've known you. But whatare you at home for now?'

'Why, I told you--to pack up my things. But I can't find half ofthem; she--she's walked off with them. Oh, I'm going off again assoon as possible--I can't stand it. But I must see Dora. Fathersays I shan't visit Papists. But I'll watch my chance. I'll getthere to-morrow--see if I don't! Tell me what she's doing, Mr. Grieve. '

David told her all he knew. Lucy's comments were verycharacteristic. She was equally hard on Daddy's ill-behaviour andDora's religion, with a little self-satisfied hardness that wouldhave provoked David but for its childish _naivete_. Many ofthe things that she said of Dora, however, showed real feeling, real affection. 

'She _is_ good, ' she wound up at last with a long sigh. 

'Yes, she's the best woman I ever saw, ' said David slowly; 'she'sbeautiful, she's a saint. '

Lucy looked up quickly--her dismayed eyes fastened on him--thenthey fell again, and her expression became suddenly piteous andhumble. 

'You're still getting on well, aren't you?' she said timidly. 'Youwere glad not to be turned out, weren't you?'

Somehow, for the life of her, she could not at that moment helpreminding him of her claim upon him. He admitted it very readily, told her broadly how he was doing and what new connections he wasmaking. It was pleasant to tell her, pleasant to speak to thischanging rose-leaf face with its eager curiosity and attention. 

'And you were ill when you were abroad?--so Dora said. Father, ofcourse, made unkind remarks--you may be sure of that!--_He_'llset stories about when he doesn't like anybody. I didn't believe aword. '

'It don't matter, ' said David hotly, but he flushed. His desire towring Purcell's neck was getting inconveniently strong. 

'No, not a bit, ' she declared. Then she suddenly broke intolaughter. 'Oh, Mr. Grieve, how many assistants do you think father'shad since you left?'

And she chatted on about these individuals, describing a series ofdolts, their achievements and personalities, with a great deal ofgirlish fun. Her companion enjoyed her little humours and egotisms, enjoyed the walk and her companionship. After the strain of theday, a day spent either in the toil of a developing business orunder a difficult pressure of thought, this light girl's voicebrought a gay, relaxed note into life. The spring was in the air, and his youth stirred again in that cavern where grief had buriedit. 

'Oh, _dear_, I must go home, ' she said at last regretfully, startled by a striking clock. 'Father'll be just mad. Of course, he'll hear all about my meeting you--I don't care. I'm not going tobe parted from all my friends to please him, particularly now he'sturned me out for good--from Dora and--'

'From you, ' she would have said, but she became suddenly consciousand her voice failed. 

'No, indeed! And your friends won't forget you, Miss Lucy. You'llgo and see Dora to-morrow?'

'Yes, if I can give them the slip at home. '

There was a pause, and then he said--

'And will you allow me to visit you at Wakely some Sunday? I knowthose moors well. '

She reddened all over with delight. There was something in thelittle stiffness of the request which gave it importance. 

'I wish you would; it's not far, ' she stammered. 'Aunt Miriam wouldbe glad to see you. '

They walked back rapidly along Mosley Street and into Market Place. There she stopped and shyly asked him to leave her. Almost all theSaturday-night crowd had disappeared from the streets. It wasreally late, and she became suddenly conscious that this walk ofhers might reasonably be regarded at home as a somewhat boldproceeding. 

'I wish you'd let me see you right home, ' he said, detaining herhand in his. 

'Oh, no, no--I shall catch it enough as it is. Oh, they'll let mein! Will it be next Sunday, Mr. Grieve?'

'No, the Sunday after. Can I do anything for you?'

He came closer to her, seeming to envelope her in his tall, protecting presence. It was impossible for him to ignore hergirlish flutter, her evident joy in having seen and talked to himagain, in spite of her dread of her father. Nor did he wish toignore them. They were unexpectedly sweet to him, and he surprisedhimself. 

'Oh no, nothing, --but it's very good of you to say so, ' she saidimpulsively; '_very_. Good night again. '

And instinctively she put out another small hand, which also hetook, so holding her prisoner a moment. 

'Look here, ' he said, 'I'll just slip down that side of the Closeand wait till I see you get safe in. Good night; I _am_ glad Isaw you!'

She ran away in a blind whirl of happiness up the steps into thepassage of Half Street. He slipped down to the left and waited, looking through the railings across the corner of the Close, hiseyes fixed on that upper window, where he had so often sat, parleying alternately with the cathedral and Voltaire. 

Lucy rang, the door opened, there were loud sounds within, but shewas admitted; it closed behind her. 

David was soon in his back room, kindling a lamp and a bit of fireto read by. But when it was done he sat bent forward over theblaze, till the cathedral clock chimed the small hours, thinking. 

She was so unformed and childish, that poor little thing!--surely aman could make what he would of her. She would give him affectionand duty; the core of the nature was sound, and her little humourswould bring life into a house. 

He had but to put out his hand--that was plain enough. And why not?Was any humbler draught to be for ever put aside, because the bestwine had been poured to waste?

Then the rebellions of an unquenched romance, an untamed heart, beset him. Surging waves of bitterness and pain, the after-swell ofthat tempest in which his youth had so nearly foundered, seemed tobear him away to seas of desolation. 

After all that had happened, the greed for personal joy he everynow and then detected in himself surprised and angered him by itsstrength. The truth was that in whole tracts of his nature he wasstill a boy, still young beyond his years, and it was the conflictin him between youth's hot immaturity and a man's bafflingexperience which made the pain of his life. 

He meant to go to Wakely on the next Sunday but one--that he wascertain of--but as to what he was to do and say when he got therehe was perhaps culpably uncertain. But in his weakness and_sehnsucht_ he dwelt upon the thought of Lucy more and more. 

Then Dora--foolish saint!--came upon the scene. 

Lucy found her way to the street in Ancoats where Dora lived, themorning after her talk with David, and the two cousins spent anagitated hour together. Lucy could hardly find time to ask Doraabout her sorrows, so occupied was she in recounting all her ownadventures. She was to go back to Wakely that very afternoon. Purcell had been absolutely unapproachable since the cousin who hadescorted Lucy to the Free Trade Hall the night before had in herown defence revealed the secret of that young lady's behaviour. Pack and go she should! He wouldn't have such a hussy another nightunder his roof. Let them do with her as could. 

'I thought he would have beaten me this morning, ' Lucy candidlyconfessed. There was a red spot on each cheek, and she wasevidently glorying in martyrdom. 'He looked like a devil--a realdevil. Why can't he be fond of me, and let me alone, like othergirls' fathers? I believe he _is_ fond of me somehow, but hewants to break my spirit--'

She tossed her head significantly. 

'Lucy, you know you ought to give in when you can, ' said theperplexed Dora, with rebuke in her voice. 

'Oh, nonsense!' said Lucy. 'You can't--it's ridiculous. Well, he'll quarrel with that woman some day--I'm sure _she's_ hismatch--and then maybe he'll want me back. But perhaps he won'tget me. '

Dora looked up with a curious expression, half smiling, halfwistful. She had already heard all the story of the walk. 

'O Dora!' cried the child, laying down her head on the tablebeneath her cousin's eyes, 'Dora, I do believe he's beginning tocare. You see he _asked_ to come to Wakely. I didn't ask him. Oh, if it all comes to nothing again, I shall break my heart!'

Dora smoothed the fine brown hair, and said affectionate things, but vaguely, as if she was not quite certain what to say. 

'He does look quite different, somehow, ' continued Lucy. 'Why do youthink he was so long away over there, Dora? Father says nastythings about it--says he fell into bad company and lost his money. '

'I don't know how uncle Purcell can know, ' said Dora indignantly. 'He's always thinking the worst of people. He was ill, for Mr. Ancrum told me, and he's the only person that _does_ know. Andanyone can see he isn't strong yet. '

'Oh, and he is so handsome!' sighed Lucy, 'handsomer than ever. There isn't a man in Manchester to touch him. '

Dora laughed out and called her a 'little silly. ' But, as privatelyin her heart of hearts she was of the same opinion, her reproof hadnot much force. 

When Lucy left, Dora put away her work, and, lifting a flushedface, walked to the window and stood there looking out. A paleApril sun was shining on the brewery opposite, and touched the darkwaters of the canal under the bridge to the left. The roofs of thesqualid houses abutting on the brewery were wet with rain. Througha gap she could see a laundress's back-yard mainly filled withdrying clothes, but boasting besides a couple of pink floweringcurrants just out, and holding their own for a few brief daysagainst the smuts of Manchester. Here and there a man out of worklounged, pipe in mouth, at his open door, silently absorbing thesunshine and the cheerfulness of the moist blue over thehouse-tops. There was a new sweetness and tenderness in the springair--or were they in Dora's soul?

She leant her head against the window, and remained there with herhands clasped before her for some little time--for her, a mostunusual idleness. 

Yes, Lucy was very obstinate. Dora had never thought she would havethe courage to fight her father in this way. And selfish, too. Shehad spoken only once of Daddy, and that in a way to make thedaughter wince. But she was so young--such a child!--and would beruined if she were left to this casual life, and people who didn'tunderstand her. A husband to take care of her, and children--theywould be the making of her. 

And he! Dora's eyes filled with tears. All this winter the changein him, the silent evidences of a shock all the more tragic to herbecause of its mystery, had given him a kind of sacredness in hereyes. She fell thinking, besides, of the times lately he had beento church with her. Ah, she was glad he had heard that sermon, thatbeautiful sermon of Canon Welby's in Passion Week! He had saidnothing about it, but she knew it had been meant for clever, educated men--men like him. The church, indeed, had been full ofmen--her neighbours had told her that several of the gentlemen fromOwens College had been there. 

That evening David knocked at the door below about half-past eight. Dora got up quickly and went across to her room-fellow, adark-faced stooping girl, who took her shirt-maker's slaverywithout a murmur, and loved Dora. 

'Would you mind, Mary?' she said timidly. 'I want to speak to Mr. Grieve. '

The girl looked up, understood, stopped her machine, and, hastilygathering some pieces together that wanted buttonholes, went offinto the little inner room and shut the door. 

Dora knelt and with restless hands put the bit of fire together. She had just thrown a handkerchief over her canaries. On the framea piece of her work, a fine altar-cloth gleaming with golds, purples, and pale pinks, stood uncovered. The deal table, the whitewalls on which hung Daddy's old prints, the bare floor with itsstrip of carpet, were all spotlessly clean. The tea had been putaway. Daddy's vacant chair stood in its place. 

When David came in he found her sitting pensively on a littlewooden stool by the fire. Generally he gossipped while the twogirls worked busily away--sometimes he read to them. To-night as hesat down he felt something impending. 

Dora talked of Lucy's visit. They agreed as to the folly andbrutality of Purcell's treatment of her, and laughed together overthe marauding stepmother. 

Then there was a pause. Dora broke it. She was sitting upright onthe stool, looking straight into his face. 

'Will you not be cross if I say something?' she asked, catching herbreath. 'It's not my business. '

'Say it, please. ' But he reddened instantly. 

'Lucy's--Lucy's--got a fancy for you, ' she said tremulously, shrinking from her own words. 'Perhaps it's a shame to say it--oh, it may be! You haven't told me anything, and she's given me noleave. But she's had it a long time. '

'I don't know why you say so, ' he replied half sombrely. 

His flush had died away, but his hand shook on his knee. 

'Oh, yes, you do, ' she cried; 'you must know. Lucy can't keep evenher own secrets. But she's got such a warm heart! I'm sure she has. If a man would take her and be kind to her, she'd make him happy. '

She stopped, looking at him intently. 

Then suddenly she burst out, laying her hand on the arm of hischair--Daddy's chair:

'Don't be angry; you've been like a brother to me. '

He took her hand and pressed it, reassuring her. 

'But how can I make her happy?' he said, with his head on his hand. 'I don't want to be a fool and deny what you say, for the sake ofdenying it. But--'

His voice sank into silence. Then, as she did not speak, he lookedup at her. She was sitting, since he had released her, with herarms locked behind her, frowning in her intensity of thought, herlast energy of sacrifice. 

'You would make her happy, ' she said slowly, 'and she'd be a lovingwife. She's flighty is Lucy, but there's nothing bad in her. '

Both were silent for another minute, then, by a natural reaction, both looked at each other and laughed. 

'I'm making rather free with you, I'm bound to admit that, ' shesaid, with a merry shamefaced expression, which brought out theyouth in her face. 

'Well, give me time, Miss Dora. If--if anything did come of it, Ishould have to let Purcell know, and there'd be flat war. You'vethought of that?'

Certainly, Dora had thought of it. They might have to wait, andPurcell would probably refuse to give or leave Lucy any money. Allthe better, according to David. Nothing would ever induce him totake a farthing of his ex-master's hoards. 

But here, by a common instinct, they stopped planning, and Davidresolutely turned the conversation. When they parted, however, Dorawas secretly eager and hopeful. It was curious how little thefather's rights weighed with so scrupulous a soul. Whether it washis behaviour to her father which had roused an unconscioushardness even in her gentle nature, or whether it was the subtleinfluence of his Dissent, as compared with the nascent dispositionsshe seemed to see in David--anyway, Dora's conscience was silent;she was entirely absorbed in her own act, and in the prospects ofthe other two. 

CHAPTER XVI

When David reached home that night he found a French letterawaiting him. It was from Louie, still dated from the country townnear Toulouse, and announced the birth of her child--a daughter. The letter was scrawled apparently from her bed, and contained somepassionate, abusive remarks about her husband, half finished, andhardly intelligible. She peremptorily called on David to send hersome money at once. Her husband was a sot, and unfaithful to her. Even now with his first child, he had taken advantage of her beinglaid up to make love to other women. All the town cried shame onhim. The priest visited her frequently, and was all on her side. 

Then at the end she wrote a hasty description of the child. Itseyes were like his, David's, but it would have much handsomereyelashes. It was by far the best-looking child in the place, andbecause everybody remarked on its likeness to her, she believedMontjoie had taken a dislike to it. She didn't care, but it madehim look ridiculous. Why didn't he do some work, instead of lettingher and her child live like pigs? He could get some, if his dirtypride would let him. It wasn't to be supposed, with this disgustingCommune going on in Paris, and everybody nearly ruined, that anyonewould want statues--they had never even sold the Maenad--butsomebody had wanted him to do a monument, cheap, the other day fora brother who had been killed in the war; and he wouldn't. He wastoo fine. That was like him all over. 

It was as though he could hear her flinging out the recklesssentences. But he thought there were signs that she was pleasedwith the baby--and he suddenly remembered her tyrannous passion forthe Mason child. 

As to the money, he looked carefully into his accounts. For thelast six months he had been gathering every possible savingtogether with a view to the History of Manchester, which he andJohn had planned to begin printing in the coming autumn. It wentagainst him sorely to take from such a hoard for the purpose ofhelping Jules Montjoie to an idler and easier existence. The fateof his six hundred pounds burnt deep into a mind which at bottomwas well furnished with all the old Yorkshire and Scotch frugality. 

However, he sent his sister money, and he gave up in thought thatfortnight's walking tour in the Lakes he had planned for hisholiday. He must just stay at home and see to business. 

Then next morning, as it happened, he woke up with a sudden hungerfor the country--a vision before his eyes of the wide bosom of theScout, of fresh airs and hurrying waters, of the sheep among theheather. His night had been restless; the whole of life seemed tobe again in debate--Lucy's figure, Dora's talk, chased andtormented him. Away to the April moorland! He sprang out of beddetermined to take the first train to Clough End. He had not beenout of Manchester for months, and it was luckily a Saturday. Herewas this letter of Louie's too--he owed the news to Uncle Reuben. Since Reuben's visit to Manchester, a year before, there had beenno communication between him and them. Six years! How would thefarm--how would Aunt Hannah look? There was a drawing in him thismorning towards the past, towards even the harsh forms and memoriesof it, such as often marks a time of emotion and crisis, the momentbefore a man takes a half-reluctant step towards a doubtful future. 

But as he journeyed towards the Derbyshire border, he was not intruth thinking of Dora's counsels or of Lucy Purcell at all. Everynow and then he lost himself in the mere intoxication of thespring, in the charm of the factory valleys, just flushing intogreen, through which the train was speeding. But in general hisattention was held by the book in his hand. His time for readinghad been much curtailed of late by the toils of his business. Hecaught covetously at every spare hour. 

The book was Bishop Berkeley's 'Dialogues. '

With what a medley of thoughts and interests had he been concernedduring the last four or five months! His old tastes and passionshad revived as we have seen, but unequally, with morbid gaps andexceptions. In these days he had hardly opened a poet or anovelist. His whole being shrank from them, as though it had beenone wound, and the books which had been to him the passionatefriends of his most golden hours, which had moulded in him, as itwere, the soul wherewith he had loved Elise, looked to him now likeenemies as he passed them quickly by upon the shelves. 

But some of his old studies--German, Greek, scienceespecially--were the saving of him. Among some foreign books, forinstance, which he had ordered for a customer he came upon a copyof some scientific essays by Littre. Among them was a survey of thestate of astronomical knowledge written somewhere about 1835, withall the luminous charm which the great Positivist had at command. David was captured by it, by the flight of the scientificimagination through time and space, amid suns, planets and nebulae, the beginnings and the wrecks of worlds. When he laid it down witha sigh of pleasure, Ancrum, who was sitting opposite, looked up. 

'You like your book, Davy?'

'Yes, ' said the other slowly, staring out of the twilight window atthe gloom which passes for sky in Manchester. Then with anotherlong breath, --'It makes you a new heaven and a new earth!'

A similar impression, only even richer and more detailed, had beenleft upon him by a volume of Huxley's 'Lay Sermons. ' The world ofnatural fact in its overpowering wealth and mystery was thus givenback to him, as it were, under another aspect than that torturingintoxicating aspect of art--one that fortified and calmed. All hisscientific curiosities which had been so long laid to sleeprevived. His first returning joy came from a sense of theinexhaustibleness and infinity of nature. 

But very soon this renewed interest in science began to have thebearing and to issue in the mental activities which, all unknown tohimself, had been from the beginning in his destiny. He could notnow read it for itself alone. That new ethical and spiritualsusceptibility, into which agony and loss had become slowlytransformed, dominated and absorbed all else. For some time, besidehis scientific books, there lay others from a class not hithertovery congenial to him, that which contains the great examples inour day, outside the poets, of the poetical or imaginativetreatment of ethics--Emerson, Carlyle, Ruskin. At an age when mostyoung minds of intelligence amongst us are first seized by theseEnglish masters, he had been wandering in French paths. 'SartorResartus, ' Emerson's 'Essays, ' 'The Seven Lamps, ' came to him nowwith an indescribable freshness and force. Nay, a too great force!We enjoy the great prophets of literature most when we have not yetlived enough to realise all they tell us. When David, wandering atnight with Teufels-drockh through heaven and hell, felt at last thehard sobs rising in his throat, he suddenly put the book and othersakin to it away from him. As with the poets so here. He must turnto something less eloquent--to paths of thought where truth shonewith a drier and a calmer light. 

But still the same problems! Since his Eden gates had closedupon him, he had been in the outer desert where man haswandered from the beginning, threatened with all the familiarphantoms, illusions, mist-voices of human thought. Whatwas consciousness--knowledge--law? Was there any law--anyknowledge--any _I?_

Naturally he had long ceased to find any final sustenance orpleasure in the Secularist literature, which had once convinced himso easily. Secularism up to a certain point, it began to seem tohim, was a commonplace; beyond that point, a contradiction. If therace should ever take the counsel of the Secularists, or of thatlarger Positivist thought, of which English secularism is thepopular reflection, the human intellect would be a poorerinstrument with a narrower swing. So much was plain to him. Fornothing can be more certain than that some of the finest powers andnoblest work of the human mind have been developed by the struggleto know what the Secularist declares is neither knowable nor worthknowing. 

Yet the histories of philosophy which he began to turn over were intruth no more fruitful to him than the talk of the _Reasoner. _They stimulated his powers of apprehension and analysis; and thegreat march of human debate from century to century touched hisimagination. But in these summaries of the philosophical field hisinmost life appropriated nothing. Once by a sort of reaction hefell upon Hume again, pining for the old intellectual clearness ofimpression, though it were a clearness of limit and negation. Buthe had hardly begun the 'Treatise' or the 'Essays' before his soulrose against them, crying for he knew not what, only that it wasfor nothing they could give. 

Then by chance a little Life of Berkeley, and upon it an oldedition of the works, fell into his hands. As he was turning overthe leaves, the 'Alciphron' so struck him that he turned to thefirst page of the first volume, and evening after evening read thewhole through with a devouring energy that never flagged. When itwas over he was a different being. The mind had crystallisedafresh. 

It was his first serious grapple with the fundamental problems ofknowledge. And, to a nature which had been so tossed and bruised inthe great unregarding tide of things, which had felt itself themere chattel of a callous universe, of no account or dignity eitherto gods or men, what strange exaltation there was in the general_suggestion_ of Berkeley's thought! The mind, the source ofall that is; the impressions on the senses, merely the speech ofthe Eternal Mind to ours, a Visual Language, whereof man'sunderstanding is perpetually advancing, which has been indeedcontrived for his education; man, naturally immortal, king ofhimself and of the senses, inalienably one--if he would but openhis eyes and see--with all that is Divine, true, eternal: the soulthat had been crushed by grief and self-contempt revived at themere touch of these vast possibilities like a trampled plant. Notthat it absorbed them yet, made them its own; but they made ahealing stimulating atmosphere in which it seemed once morepossible for it to grow into a true manhood. The spiritualhypothesis of things was for the first time presented in such a wayas to take imaginative hold without exciting or harrowing thefeelings; he saw the world reversed, in a pure light of thought, asBerkeley saw it, and all the horizon of things fell back. 

Now--on this April afternoon--as the neighbourhood of Manchesterwas left behind, as the long woodclad valleys and unpollutedstreams began to prophesy of Derbyshire and the Peak, David, hisface pressed against the window, fell into a dream with Berkeleyand with nature. Oh for knowledge! for verification! He began dimlyand passionately to see before him a life devoted to thought--alife in which science after science should become the docileinstrument of a mind still pressing on and on into the shadowyrealm, till, in Berkeley's language, the darkness part, and it'recover the lost region of light'!

But in the very midst of this overwhelming vision he said suddenlyto himself:

'There is another way--another answer--Dora's way and Ancrum's. '

Aye, the way of faith, which asks for no length of years in whichto win the goal, which is there at once--in the beat of awing--safe on the breast of God! He thought of it as he had seen itillustrated in his friend and in Dora, with the mixture ofattraction and repulsion which, in this connection, was now more orless habitual to him. The more he saw of Dora, the more hewondered--at her goodness and her ignorance. Her positive disliketo, and alienation from knowledge was amazing. At the firstindication of certain currents of thought he could see her soulshrivelling and shrinking like a green leaf near flame. As he hadgradually realised, she had with some difficulty forgiven him theattempt to cure Daddy's drinking through a doctor; that anyoneshould think sin could be reached by medicine--it was in effect tothrow doubt on the necessity of God's grace! And she could not bearthat he should give her information from the books he read aboutthe Bible or early Christianity. His detached, though neverhostile, tone was clearly intolerable to her. She could not andwould not suffer it, would take any means of escaping it. 

Then that Passion-week sermon she had taken him to hear; which hadso moved her, with which she had so sweetly and persistentlyassumed his sympathy! The preacher had been a High Church Canonwith a considerable reputation for eloquence. The one o'clockservice had been crowded with business and professional men. Davidhad never witnessed a more tempting opportunity. But how hollow andempty the whole result! What foolish sentimental emphasis, whatunreality, what contempt for knowledge, yet what a show of it!--anelegant worthless jumble of Gibbon, Horace, St. Augustine, Wesley, Newman and Mill, mixed with the cheap picturesque--with moonlighton the Campagna, and sunset on Niagara--and leading, by the loosestrhetoric, to the most confident conclusions. He had the taste of itin his mouth still. Fresh from the wrestle of mind into whichBerkeley had led him, he fell into a new and young indignation withsermon and preacher. 

Yet, all the same, if you asked how man could best _live_, apart from thinking, how the soul could put its foot on thebrute--where would Dora stand then? What if the true key to lifelay not in knowledge, but in _will_? What if knowledge in thetrue sense was ultimately impossible to man, and if Christianitynot only offered, but could give him the one thing trulyneedful--his own will, regenerate?

But with the first sight of the Clough End streets these highdebates were shaken from the mind. 

He ran up the Kinder road, with its villanous paving of cobbles andcoal dust, its mills to the right, down below in the hollow, skirting the course of the river, and its rows of workmen's homesto the left, climbing the hill--in a tremor of excitement. Sixyears! Would anyone recognize him? Ah! there was Jerry's 'public, 'an evil-looking weather-stained hole; but another name swung on thesign; poor Jerry!--was he, too, gone the way of orthodox andsceptic alike? And here was the Foundry--David could hardly preventhimself from marching into the yard littered with mysterious oddsand ends of old iron which had been the treasure house of hischildhood. But no Tom--and no familiar face anywhere. 

Yes!--there was the shoemaker's cottage, where the prayer-meetinghad been, and there, on the threshold, looking at the approachingfigure, stood the shoemaker's wife, the strange woman with themystical eyes. David greeted her as he came near. She stared at himfrom under a bony hand put up against the sun, but did notapparently recognise him; he, seized with sudden shyness, quickenedhis pace, and was soon out of her sight. 

In a minute or two he was at the Dye-works, which mark the limit ofthe town, and the opening of the valley road. Every breath now wasdelight. The steep wooded hills to the left, the red-brown shoulderof the Scout in front, were still wrapt in torn and floating shredsof mist. But the sun was everywhere--above in the slowly triumphingblue, in the mist itself, and below, on the river and the fields. The great wood climbing to his left was all embroidered on thebrown with palms and catkins, or broken with patches of greeninglarch, which had a faintly luminous relief amid the rest. And thedash of the river--and the scents of the fields! He leapt the wallof the lane, and ran down to the water's edge, watching a dipperamong the stones in a passion of pleasure which had no words. 

Then up and on again, through the rough uneven lane, higher andhigher into the breast of the Scout. What if he met Jim Wigson onthe way? What if Aunt Hannah, still unreconciled, turned him fromthe door? No matter! Rancour and grief have no hold on mortalswalking in such an April world--in such an exquisite and sunlitbeauty. On! let thought and nature be enough! Why complicate andcumber life with relations that do but give a foothold to pain, andoffer less than they threaten?

There is smoke rising from Wigson's, and figures moving in theyard. Caution!--keep close under the wall. And here at last isNeedham farm, at the top of its own steep pitch, with the sycamoretrees in the lane beside it, the Red Brook sweeping round it to theright, the rough gate below, the purple Scout mist-wreathed behind. There are cows lowing in the yard, a horse grazes in the frontfield; through the little garden gate a gleam of sun strikes on thestruggling crocuses and daffodils which come up year after year, noman heeding them; there is a clucking of hens, a hurry of water, aflood of song from a lark poised above the field. The blue smokerises into the misty air; the sun and the spring caress the ruggedlonely place. 

With a beating heart David opened the gate into the field, walkedround the little garden, let himself into the yard, and with ahasty glance at the windows mounted the steps and knocked. 

No answer. He knocked again. Surely Aunt Hannah must be aboutsomewhere. Eleven o'clock; how quiet the house was!

This time there was a clatter of a chair on a flagged floor inside, and a person with a slow laboured step came and opened. 

It was Reuben. He adjusted his spectacles with difficulty, andstared at the intruder. 

'Uncle Reuben!--I thought it was such a fine day, I'd just run overand see the old place, and bring you some news, ' said David, smiling and holding out his hand. 

Reuben took it, stupefied. 'Davy, ' he said, trembling. Then with asudden movement he whipped the door to behind him, and shut itclose. 

'Whist!' he said, putting his old finger to his lip. 'T' servant'sjust settlin her i' t' kitchen. She's noa ready yet--she's beenterr'ble bad th' neet. Coom yo here. ' And he descended the stepswith infinite care, and led David to the wood-shed. 

'Is Aunt Hannah ill?' asked David, astonished. 

Reuben leant against the wall of the shed, and took off hisspectacles, as though to wipe them with his old and shaking hands. Then David saw a sort of convulsion pass across his ungainly face. 

'Aye, ' he said, looking down, 'aye, she's broken is Hannah. Yo didnaknaw?'

'I've heard nothing. '

Reuben recounted the facts. Since her stroke of last spring, andthe partial recovery which had followed upon it, there had beenlittle apparent change, except perhaps in the direction of slowlyincreasing weakness. She was a wreck, and likely to remain so. Hardly anybody but Reuben could understand her now, and she rarelylet him out of her sight. He could not get time to attend to thefarm, was obliged to leave things to the hired man, and was introuble often about his affairs. 

'Bit yo see, she hasna t' reet use of her speach, ' he said, excusing himself humbly to this handsome city nephew. 'An' she connogie ower snipin aw at onst. 'Twudna be human natur'. An't' gell'sworritin' an' I mun tell her what t' missis says. '

David asked if he might see her, or should he just turn back to thetown? Reuben protested, his hospitality and family feeling aroused, his poor mind torn with conflicting motives. 

'I believe she'd fratch if she didna see tha, ' he said at last. 'A'll just goo ben, and ask. '

He went in, and David remained in the wood-shed, staring out at thefamiliar scene, at Louie's window, at the steps where he and shehad fed the fowls together. 

The door opened again, and Reuben reappeared on the steps, agitatedand beckoning. 

David went in, stepping softly, holding his blue cloth cap in hishand. In another instant he stood beside the old cushioned seat inthe kitchen, looking down at Hannah. 

This Hannah! this his childhood's enemy! this shawled and shrunkenfigure with the white parchment face and lantern cheeks!

He stooped to her and said something about why he had come. Reubenlistened wondering. 

'Louie's married and got a babby--dosto hear, Hannah? And he--t'lad--did yo iver see sich a yan for growin?'

He wished to be mildly jocular. Hannah's face did not move. She hadjust touched her nephew with her cold wasted hand. Now she beckonedto him to sit down at her right. He did so, and then for the firsttime he could believe that Hannah, the old Hannah, was there besidethem. For as she slowly studied his dress, the Inverness cape thenas now a favourite garb in Manchester, the hand holding the cap, refined since she saw it last by commerce with books and pensrather than hurdles and sheep, the broad shoulders, the dark head, her eye for the first time met his, full, and a weird thrill wentthrough him. For that eye--dulled, and wavering--was still Hannah. The old hate was in it, the old grudge, all that had been at leastfor him and Louie the inmost and characteristic soul of theirtyrant. He knew in an instant that she had in her mind the money ofwhich he and his sister had robbed her, and beyond that theoffences of their childhood, the infamy of their mother. If shecould, she would have hurled them all upon him. As it was, she wassilent, but that brooding eye, like a smouldering spark in herblanched face, spoke for her. 

Reuben tried to talk. But a weight lay on him and David. The gaunthead in the coarse white nightcap turned now to one, now to theother, pursued them phantom-like. Presently he insisted that hisnephew must dine, avoiding Hannah's look. David would much ratherhave gone without; but Reuben, affecting joviality, called theservant, and some food was brought. No attempt was made to includeHannah in the meal. David supposed that it was now necessary tofeed her. 

Reuben talked disjointedly of the neighbours and his stock, andasked a few questions, without listening to the answers, aboutDavid's affairs, and Louie's marriage. In Hannah's presence hispoor dull wits were not his own; he could in truth think of nothingbut her. 

After the meal, however, when a draught of ale had put some heartin him, he got up with an air of resolution. 

'I mun goo and see what that felly's been doin' wi' th'Huddersfield beeasts, ' he said; 'wilta coom wi' me, Davy? Mary!'

He called the little maid. Hannah suddenly said somethingincoherent which David could not understand. Reuben affected not tohear. 

'Mary, gie your mistress her dinner, like a good gell. An' keep t'house-door open, soa 'at she can knock wi' t' stick if she wantsowt. '

He stood before her restless and ashamed, afraid to look at her. Then he suddenly stooped and kissed her on the forehead. David felta lump in his throat. As he took leave of her the spell, as itwere, of Reuben's piteous affection came upon him. He saw nothingbut a dying and emaciated woman, and taking her hand in his, hesaid some kind natural words. 

The hand dropped from his like a stone. As he stood at the doorbehind Reuben, the servant came forward with a plate of somethingwhich she put down inside the fender. As she did so, she awkwardlyupset the fire-irons, which fell with a crash. Hannah startedupright in her chair, with a rush of half-articulate words, grasping fiercely for her stick with glaring eyes. The servant, awild moorland lass, fled terrified, and at the 'house' door turnedand made a face at David. 

Outside Reuben slowly mastered himself, and woke up to some realinterest in Louie's doings. David told him her story frankly, sofar as it could be separated from his own, and, pressed by Reuben'squestions, even revealed at last the matter of the six hundredpounds. Reuben could not get over it. Sandy's "six hunderd pund"which he had earned with the sweat of his brow, all handed over tothat minx Louie, and wasted by her and a rascally French husband ina few months--it was more than he could bear. 

'Aye, aye, marryin's varra weel, ' he said impatiently. 'A grant thait's a great sin coomin thegither without marryin. But Sandy's sixhunderd pund! Noa, I conno abide sich wark. '

And he fell into sombre silence, out of which David could hardlyrouse him. Except that he said once, 'And we that had kep' it solong. I'd better never ha gien it tha. ' And clearly that was thebitter thought in his mind. The sacrifice that had taxed all hismoral power, and, as he believed, brought physical ruin on Hannah, had been for nothing, or worse than nothing. Neither he nor Davidnor anyone was the better for it. 

'I must go over the shoulder to Frimley, ' said David at last. Theyhad made a half-hearted inspection of the stock in the home fields, and were now passing through the gate on to the moor. 'I must seeMargaret Dawson again before I take the train back. '

Reuben looked astonished and shook his head as though he did notremember anything about Margaret Dawson. He walked on beside hisnephew for a while in silence. The Red Brook was leaping anddancing beside them, the mountain ashes were just bursting intoleaf, the old smithy was ahead of them on the heathery slope, andto their left the Downfall, full and white, thundered over itsyellow rocks. 

But they had hardly crossed the Red Brook to mount the peak beyondwhen Reuben drew up. 

'Noa'--he said restlessly--'noa. I mun goo back. T' gell's flightyand theer's aw maks o' mischief i' yoong things. ' He stood and heldhis nephew by the hand, looking at him long and wistfully. As hedid so a calmer expression stole for an instant into the poortroubled eyes. 

'Very like a'st not see tha again, Davie. We niver know, Livin'shard soomtimes--soa's deein, folks say. I'm often freet'nt ofdeein'--but I should na be. Theer's noan so mich peace here, and we_knaw_ that wi' the Lord theer's peace. '

He gave a long sigh--all his character was in it--so tortured wasit and hesitating. 

They parted, and the young man climbed the hill, looking back oftento watch the bent figure on the lower path. The spell had somehowvanished from the sunshine, the thrill from the moorland air. Lifewas once more cruel, implacable. 

He walked fast to Frimley, and made for the cottage of Margaret'sbrother. He remembered its position of old. 

A woman was washing in the 'house' or outer kitchen. She receivedhim graciously. The weekly money which in one way or another he hadnever failed to pay since he first undertook it, had made him wellknown to her and her husband. With a temper quite unlike that ofthe characteristic northerner, she showed no squeamishness at allabout the matter. If it hadn't been for his help, they would justhave sent Margaret to the workhouse, she said bluntly; for they hadmany mouths to feed, and couldn't have burdened themselves with anextra one. She was quite 'silly' and often troublesome. 

'Is she here?' David asked. 

'Aye, if yo goo ben, yo'll find her, ' said the woman, carelesslypointing to an inner door. 'I conno ha her in here washin days, northe children noather. '

David opened the door pointed out to him. He found himself in arough weaving shed almost filled by a large hand-loom, with itsforest of woodwork rising to the ceiling, its rolls of perforatedpattern-paper, its great cylinders below, and many-colouredshuttles to either hand. But to-day it stood idle, the weaver wasnot at work. The room was stuffy but cold, and inexpressibly gloomyin this silence of the loom. 

Where was Margaret? After a minute's search, there, beyond theloom, sitting by a fireless grate, was a little figure in a bedgownand nightcap, poking with a stick amid the embers, and as it seemedcrooning to itself. 

David made his way up to her, inexpressibly moved. 

'Margaret!'

She did not know him in the least. She had a starved-looking cat onher lap, which she was huddling against her breast. The face hadfallen away almost to nothing, so small and thin it was. She wasdirty and unkempt. Her still brown hair, once so daintily neat, straggled out beneath her torn cap; her print bed-gown was pinnedacross her, her linsey skirt was in holes; everywhere the same taleof age neglected and unloved. 

When David first stood before her she drew back with a terrifiedlook, still clutching the cat tightly. But, as he smiled at her, with the tears in his eyes, speaking her name tenderly, herfrightened look relaxed, and she remained staring at him with theshrinking furtive expression of a quite young child. 

He knelt down beside her. 

'Margaret, dear Margaret--don't you know me?'

She did not answer, but her wrinkled eyes, still blue and vaguelysweet, wavered under his, and it seemed to him that every now andthen a shiver of cold ran through her old and frail body. He wenton gently, trying to recall her wandering senses. In vain. In themiddle she interrupted him with a piteous lip. 

'They promised me a ribbon for't, ' she said, complainingly, in ahoarse, bronchitic voice, pointing to the animal she held, and toits lean neck adorned with a collar of plaited string, on whichapparently she had just been busy, to judge from the odds and endsof string lying about. 

At the same moment David became aware of a couple of childrencraning their heads round the corner of the loom to look, a loutishboy about eleven, and a girl rather younger. At sight of them, Margaret raised a cry of distress and alarm, with that helplessindefinable note in the voice which shows that personality, in thetrue sense, is no longer there. 

'Go away!' David commanded. 

The children did not stir, but grinned. He made a threateningmovement. Then the boy, as quick as lightning, put his tongue outat Margaret, and caught hold of his sister, and they clattered off, their mother in the next room scolding them out into the streetagain. 

And this the end of a creature all sacrifice, a life all affection!

He took her shivering hand in his. 

'Margaret, listen to me. You shall be better looked after. I willsee to that. No one shall be unkind to you any more. If they won'tdo it here, my--my--wife shall take care of you!'

He lifted her hand and kissed it, putting all the pity and bitterindignation of his heart into the action. Margaret, seeing hisemotion, whimpered too; otherwise she was impassive. 

He left her, went into the next room, and had a long energetic talkwith Margaret's sister-in-law. The woman, half ashamed, halfrecalcitrant, in the end promised amendment. What business it wasof his she could not imagine; but the small weekly addition whichhe offered to make to Margaret's payments, while it showed him agreater fool than before, made it impossible to put his meddlingaside. She promised that Margaret should be brought into the warm, that she should have better clothes, and that the children shouldbe kept from plaguing her. 

Then he departed, and mounting the moor again, spent an hour or twowandering among the boggy fissures of the top, or sitting on thehigh edges of the heather, looking down over the dark and craggysplendour of the hill immediately around and beneath him, on andaway through innumerable paling shades of distance to the blueWelsh border. His speculative fervour was all gone. Reuben, Hannah, Margaret, these figures of suffering and pain had brought him closeto earth again. The longing for a human hand in his, for a home, wife, children to spend himself upon, to put at least for a whilebetween him and this unconquerable 'something which infects theworld, ' became in this long afternoon a physical pain not to beresisted. He thought more and more steadily of Lucy, schoolinghimself, idealising her. 

It was the Sunday before Whitsunday. David was standing outside atrim six-roomed house in the upper part of the little Lancashiretown of Wakely, waiting for Lucy Purcell. 

She came at last, flushed and discomposed, pulling the door hastilyto behind her. 

They walked on a short distance, talking disconnectedly of theweather, the mud, and the way on to the moor, till she saidsuddenly:

'I wish people wouldn't be so good and so troublesome!'

'Did Robert wish to keep you at home?' inquired David, laughing. 

'Well, he didn't want me to come out with--anybody but him, ' shesaid, flushing. 'And it's so bad, because one can't be cross. Idon't know how it is, but they're just the best people here thatever walked!'

She looked up at him seriously, an unusual energy in her slightface. 

'What!--a town of saints?' asked David, mocking. It was sodifficult to take Lucy seriously. 

She tossed her head and insisted. 

Talking very fast, and not very consecutively, she gave him anaccount, so far as she was able, of the life lived in this littletown, a typical Lancashire town of the smaller and more homogeneouskind. All the people worked in two large spinning mills, or in afew smaller factories representing dependent industries, such asreed-making. Their work was pleasant to them. Lucy complained, withthe natural resentment of the idle who see their place in the worldjeopardised by the superfluous energy of the workers, that shecould never get the mill girls to say that the mill hours were toolong. The heat tried them, made appetites delicate, and lungmischief common. But the only thing which really troubled them was'half-time. ' Socially everybody knew everybody. They werepassionately interested in each other's lives and in the town'saffairs. And their religion, of a strong Protestant type expressedin various forms of Dissent, formed an ideal bond which kept thelittle society together, and made an authority which allacknowledged, an atmosphere in which all moved. 

The picture she drew was, in truth, the picture of one of thosesocial facts on which perhaps the future of England depends. Shedrew it girlishly, quite unconscious of its large bearings, gossiping about this person and that, with a free expenditure ofvery dogmatic opinion on the habits and ways which were not hers. But, on the whole, the picture emerged, and David had never likedher talk so well. The little self-centred thing had somehow beenmade to wonder and admire; which is much for all of us. 

And she, meanwhile, was instantly sensible that she was in a happyvein, that she pleased. Her eyes danced under her pretty springhat. How proud she was to walk with him--that he had come all thisway to see her! As she shyly glanced him up and down, she wouldhave liked the village street to be full of gazers, and was almostloth to leave the public way for the loneliness of the moor. Whatother girl in Wakely had the prospect of such a young man to takeher out? Oh! would he ever, ever 'ask her'--would he even comeagain?

At last, after a steep and muddy climb, through uninviting backways, they were out upon the moor. An apology for a moor in David'seyes! For the hills which surround the valley of the Irwell, inwhich Wakely lies, are, for the most part, green and rollingground, heatherless and cragless. Still, from the top they lookedover a wide and wind-blown scene, the bolder moors of Rochdalebehind them, and in front the long green basin in which the Irwellrises. Along the valley bottoms lay the mills, with theirsurrounding rows of small stone houses. Up on the backs of themoors crouched the old farms, which have watched the mills come, and will perhaps see them go; and here and there a grim-lookingcolliery marked a fold of the hill. The landscape on a spring dayhas a bracing bareness, which is not without exhilaration. The windblows freshly, the sun lies broadly on the hills. England, on thewhole at her busiest and best, spreads before you. 

They were still on the top when it occurred to them that they had along walk in prospect--for they talked of getting to the source ofthe Irwell--and that it was dinner-time. So they sat down under oneof the mortarless stone walls which streak the moors, and Davidbrought out the meal that was in his pockets. They ate withlaughter and chat. Pigeons passed overhead, going and coming froman old farm about a hundred yards away; the sky above them had alark for voice singing his loudest; and in the next field a peewitwas wheeling and crying. The few trees in sight were strugglingfast into leaf. Nature even in this cold north was gay to-day andyoung. 

Suddenly, in the midst of their meal, by a natural caprice andreaction of the mind, as David sat looking down on slate roofs andbare winding valley, across the pale, rain-beaten grass of themoor, all the northern English detail vanished from his eyes. Forone suffocating instant he saw nothing but a great picture gallery, its dimly storied walls and polished floor receding into thedistance. In front Velazquez' 'Infanta, ' and before it a figurebent over a canvas. Every line and tint stood out. He heard thelight varying voice, caught the complex grace of the woman, thestrenuous effort of the artist. 

Enough! He closed his eyes for one bitter instant; then raised themagain to England and to Lucy. 

There under the wall, while they were still lingering in the sun, he asked Lucy Purcell to be his wife. And Lucy, hardly believingher own foolish ears, and in a whirl of bliss and exultation pastexpression, nevertheless put on a few maidenly airs and graces, coquetted a little, would not be kissed all at once, talked of herfather and the war that must be faced, and finally surrendered, held up her scarlet cheek for her lord's caress, and then satspeechless, hand in hand with him. 

But Nature had its way. They rambled on, crossing the stone stileswhich link the bare green fields on the side of the moor. When astile appeared, Lucy would send him on in front, so that she mightmount decorously, and then descend trembling upon his hand. 

Presently they came to a spot where the path crossed a littlestreamlet, and then climbed a few rough steps in a steep bank, andso across a stile at the top. 

David ran up, leapt the stile, and waited. But he had time to studythe distant course of their walk, as well as the burnt andlime-strewn grass about him, for no Lucy appeared. He leant overthe wall, and to his amazement saw her sitting on one of the stonesteps below, crying. 

He was beside her in an instant. But he could not loosen the handsclasped over her eyes. 

'Oh, why did you do it?--why did you do it? I'm not good enough--Inever shall be good enough!'

For the first time since their formal kiss he put his arms roundher. And as she, at last forced to look up, found herself close tothe face which, in its dark refinement and power, seemed to herto-day so far, so wildly above her deserts, she saw it allquivering and changed. Never had little Lucy risen to such amoment; never again, perhaps, could she so rise. But in thatinstant of passionate humility she had dropped healing and lifeinto a human heart. 

Yet, was it Lucy he kissed?--Lucy he gathered in his arms? Or wasit not rather Love itself?--the love he had sought, had missed, butmust still seek--and seek?

BOOK IV MATURITY

CHAPTER I

'Daddy!' said a little voice. 

The owner of it, a child of four, had pushed open a glass door, andwas craning his curly head through it towards a garden that laybeyond. 

'Yes, you rascal, what do you want now?'

'Daddy, come here!'

The voice had a certain quick stealthiness, through which, however, a little tremor of apprehension might be detected. 

David Grieve, who was smoking and reading in the garden, came up towhere his small son stood, and surveyed him. 

'Sandy, you've been getting into mischief. '

The child laid hold of his father, dragged him into the littlehall, and towards the dining-room door. Arrived there, he stopped, put a finger to his lip, and laid his head plaintively on one side. 

'Zere's an _aw_ ful sight in zere, Daddy. '

'You monkey, what have you been up to?'

David opened the door. Sandy first hung back, then, in a suddenenthusiasm, ran in, and pointed a thumb pink with much sucking atthe still uncleared dinner-table, which David and the child'smother had left half an hour before. 

'Zere's a pie!' he said, exultantly. 

And a pie there was. First, all the salt-cellars had been upsetinto the middle of the table, then the bits of bread left besidethe plates had been crumbled in, then--the joys of wickednessgrowing--the mustard-pot had been emptied over the heap, somebananas had been stuck unsteadily here and there to give itfeature, and finally, in a last orgie of crime, a cruet of vinegarhad been discharged on the whole, and the brown streams were nowmeandering across the clean tablecloth. 

'Sandy, you little wretch!' cried his father, 'don't you know thatyou have been told again and again not to touch the things on thetable? Hold out your hand!'

Sandy held out a small paw, whimpered beforehand, but never ceasedall the time to watch his father with eyes which seemed to bequietly on the watch for experiences. 

David administered two smart pats, then rang the bell for thehousemaid. Sandy stationed himself on the rug opposite his father, and looked at his reddened hand, considering. 

'I don't seem to mind much, Daddy!' he said at last, looking up. 

'No, sir. Daddy'll have to try and find something that you_will_ mind. '

The tone was severe, and David did his best to frown. In realityhis eyes, under the frown, devoured his small son, and he had somedifficulty in restraining himself from kissing the hand he had justslapped. 

When the housemaid entered, however, she showed a temper whichwould clearly have slapped Master Sandy without the smallestcompunction. 

The little fellow stood and listened to her laments anddenunciations with the same grave considering eyes, slipped hishand inside his father's for protection, watched, like oneenchained, the gradual demolition of the pie, and when it was allgone, and the tablecloth removed, he gave a long sigh of relief. 

'Say you're sorry, sir, to Jane, for giving her so much extratrouble, ' commanded his father. 

'I'm soddy, Jane, ' said the child, nodding to her; 'but it was ap--_wecious_ pie, wasn't it?'

The mixture of humour and candour in his baby eye was irresistible. Even Jane laughed, and David took him up and swung him on to hisshoulder. 

'Come out, young man, into the garden, where I can keep an eye onyou. Oh! by the way, are you all right again?'

This inquiry was uttered as they reached the garden seat, and Davidperched the child on his knee. 

'Yes, I'm _bet_--ter, ' said the child slowly, evidentlyunwilling to relinquish the dignity of illness all in a moment. 

'Well, what was the matter with you that you gave poor mammy such abad night?'

The child was silent a moment, pondering how to express himself. 

'I was-I was a little sick outside, and a little _feelish_inside'--he wavered on the difficult word. 'Mammy said I had thewrong dinner yesterday at Aunt Dora's. Zere was plums--_lots_o' plums!' said the child, clasping his hands on his knee, andhunching himself up in a sudden ecstasy. 

'Well, don't go and have the wrong dinner again at Aunt Dora's. Imust tell her to give you nothing but rice pudding. '

'Zen I shan't go zere any more, ' said the child with determination. 

'What, you love plums more than Aunt Dora?'

'No--o, ' said Sandy dubiously, 'but plums is good!'

And, with a sigh of reminiscence, he threw himself back in hisfather's arm, being, in fact, tired after his bad night and thefurther excitement of the 'pie. ' The thumb slipped into the pinkmouth, and with the other hand the child began dreamily to pull atone of his fair curls. The attitude meant going to sleep, and Davidhad, in fact, hardly settled him, and drawn a light overcoat whichlay near over his small legs, before the fringed eyelids sank. 

David held him tenderly, delighting in the weight, the warmth, thesoft even breath of his sleeping son. He managed somehow to relighthis pipe, and then sat on, dreamily content, enjoying the warmSeptember sunshine, and letting the book he had brought out lieunopened. 

The garden in which he sat was an oblong piece of ground, with acentral grass plat and some starved and meagre borders on eitherhand. The gravel in the paths had blackened, so had the leaves ofthe privets and the lilacs, so also had the red-brick walls of thelow homely house closing up the other end of the garden. Seventyyears ago this house had stood pleasantly amid fields on thenorthern side of Manchester; its shrubs had been luxuriant, itsroses unstained. Now on every side new houses in oblong gardens hadsprung up, and the hideous smoke plague of Manchester had descendedon the whole district, withering and destroying. 

Yet David had a great affection for his house, and it deserved it. It had been built in the days when there was more elbow-room in theworld than now. The three sitting-rooms on the ground floor openedsociably into each other, and were pleasantly spacious, and the onestory of bedrooms above contained, at any rate in the eyes of thetenants of the house, a surprising amount of accommodation. Whenall was said, however, it remained, no doubt, a very modestdwelling, at a rent of somewhere about ninety pounds a year; but asDavid sat contemplating it this afternoon, there rose in him againthe astonishment with which he had first entered upon it, astonishment that he, David Grieve, should ever have been able toattain to it. 

'Sandy! come here directly! Where are you, sir?'

David heard the voice calling in the hall, and raised his own. 

'Lucy! all right!--he's here. '

The glass door opened, and Lucy came out. She was very smartlyarrayed in a new blue dress which she had donned since dinner; yether looks were cross and tired. 

'Oh, David, how stupid! Why isn't the child dressed? Just look whatan object! I sent Lizzie for him ten minutes ago, and she couldn'tfind him. '

'Then Lizzie has even less brains than I supposed, ' said Davidcomposedly, 'seeing that she had only to look out of a back window. What are you going to do with him?'

'Take him out with me, of course. There are the Watsons ofFallowfield, they pestered me to bring him, and they're at homeSaturdays. And aren't you coming too?'

'Madam, you are unreasonable!' said David, smiling, and puttingdown his pipe he laid an affectionate hand on his wife's arm. 'Iwent careering about the world with you last Saturday and theSaturday before, and this week end I must take for reading. Thereis an Oxford man who has been writing me infuriated letters thisweek because I won't let him know whether we will take up hispamphlet or no. I must get that read, and a good many other things, before tomorrow night. '

'Oh, I know!' said Lucy, pettishly. 'There's always something in theway of what I want. Soon I shan't see anything of you at all; itwill be all business, and yet not a penny more to spend! Well, then, give me Sandy. '

David hesitated. 

'Do you think you'll take him?' he said, bending over the littlefellow. 'He doesn't look a bit himself to-day. It's those abominableplums of Dora's!'

He spoke with fierceness, as though Dora had been the veriestcriminal. 

'Well, but what nonsense!' cried Lucy; 'they don't upset otherchildren. I can't think what's wrong with him. '

'He isn't like other children; he's of a finer make, ' said David, laughing at his own folly, but more than half sincere in it all thesame. 

Lucy laughed too, and was appeased. She bent down to look at him, confessed that he was pale, and that she had better not take himlest there should be catastrophes. 

'Well, then, I must go alone, ' she said, turning awaydiscontentedly. 'I don't know what's the good of it. Nobody cares tosee me without him or you. '

The last sentence came out with a sudden energy, and as she lookedback towards him he saw that her cheek was flushed. 

'What, in that new gown?' he said, smiling, and looked her up anddown approvingly. 

Her expression brightened. 

'Do you like it?' she said, more graciously. 

'Very much. You look as young as when I first teased you! Come hereand let me give you a "nip for new. "'

She came docilely. He pretended to pinch the thin wrist she heldout to him, and then, stooping, lightly kissed it. 

'Now go and enjoy yourself, ' he said, 'and I'll take care of Sandy. Don't tire yourself. Take a cab when you want one. '

She was moving away when a thought struck her. 

'What are you going to say to Lord Driffield?'

A cloud crossed David's look. 'Well, what am I to say to him? Youdon't really want to go, Lucy?'

In an instant the angry look came back. 

'Oh, very well!' she cried. 'If you're ashamed of me, and don't careto take me about with you, just say it, that's all!'

'As if I wanted to go myself!' he remonstrated. 'Why, I should bebored to death; so would you. I don't believe there would be aperson in the house whom either of us would ever have seen before, except Lord Driffield. And I can see Lord Driffield, and his bookstoo, in much more comfortable ways than by going to stay with him. '

Lucy stood silent a moment, trying to contain herself, then shebroke out:

'That is just like you!' she said in a low bitter voice; 'you won'ttake any chance of getting on. It's always the way. People say tome that you're so clever--that you're thought so much of inManchester, you might be anything you like. And what's the good?--that's what I think! If you do earn more money you won't let uslive any differently. It's always, can't we do without this? andcan't we do without that? And as to knowing people, you won't takeany trouble at all! Why can't we get on, and make new friends, andbe--be--as good as anybody? other people do. I believe you think Ishould disgrace myself--I should put my knife in my mouth, orsomething, if you took me to Lord Driffield's. I can behave myself_perfectly_, thank you. '

And Lucy looked at her husband in a perfect storm of temper andresentment. Her prettiness had lost much of its first bloom; thecheek-bones, always too high, were now more prominent than in firstyouth, and the whole face had a restless thinness which robbed itof charm, save at certain rare moments of unusual moral or physicalwell-being. David, meeting his wife's sparkling eyes, felt a pangcompounded of many mixed compunctions and misgivings. 

'Look here, Lucy!' he said, laying down his pipe, and stretchingout his free hand to her, 'don't say those things. They hurt me, andyou don't mean them. Come and sit down a moment, and let's make upour minds about Lord Driffield. '

Unwillingly she let herself be drawn down beside him on the gardenbench. These quarrels and reproaches were becoming a necessity anda pleasure to her. David felt, with a secret dread, that the habitof them had been growing upon her. 

'I haven't done so very badly for you, have I?' he saidaffectionately, as she sat down, taking her two gloved hands in hisone. 

Lucy vehemently drew them away. 

'Oh, if you mean to say, ' she cried, her eyes flaming, 'that I hadno money, and ought just to be thankful for what I can get, just_say it_, that's all. '

This time David flushed. 

'I think, perhaps, you'd better go and pay your calls, ' he said, after a minute; 'we can talk about this letter some other time. '

Lucy sat silent her chest heaving. As soon as ever in these littlescenes between them he began to show resentment, she began to giveway. 

'I didn't mean that, ' she said, uncertainly, in a low voice lookingready to cry. 

'Well, then, suppose you don't say it, ' replied David, after apause. 'If you'll try and believe it, Lucy, I don't want to go toLord Driffield's simply and solely because I am sure we shouldneither of us enjoy it. Lady Driffield is a stuck-up sort ofperson, who only cares about her own set and relations. We shouldbe patronised, we should find it difficult to be ourselves--therewould be no profit for anybody. Lord Driffield would be too busy tolook after us; besides, he has more power anywhere than in his ownhouse. '

'No one could patronise you, ' said Lucy, firing up again. 

'I don't know, ' said David, with a smile and a stretch; 'I'm shy--onother people's domains. If they'd come here I should know how todeal with them. '

Lucy was silent for a while, twisting her mouth discontentedly. David observed her. Suddenly he held out his hand to her again, relenting. 

'Do you really want to go so much, Lucy?'

'Of course I do, ' she said, pouting, in a quick injured tone. 'It's--it's a chance, and I want to see what it's like; and Ishould hardly have to buy anything new, unless it's a new bonnet, and I can make that myself. '

David sat considering. 

'Well!' he said at last, trying to stifle his sigh, 'I don't mind. I'll write and accept. '

Lucy's eye gleamed. She edged closer to her husband. 

'You won't mind very much? It's only two nights. Isn't Sandycramping your arm?'

'Oh, we shall get through, I dare say. No--the boy's all right. I_say_'--with a groan--'shall I have to get a new dress suit?'

'Yes, of _course_, ' said Lucy, with indignant eagerness. 

'Well, then, if you don't go off, and let me earn some money, weshall be in the Bankruptcy Court. Good-bye! I shall take the boyinto the study, and cover him up while I work. '

Lucy stood before him an instant, then stooped and kissed him onthe forehead. She would have liked to say a penitent word or two, but there was still something hard and hot in her heart whichprevented her. Yet her husband, as he sat there, seemed to her thehandsomest and most desirable of men. 

David nodded to her kindly, and sat watching her slim straightfigure as she tripped away from him across the garden anddisappeared into the house. Then he bent over Sandy and raised himin his arms. 

'Don't wake, Sandy!' he said softly, as the little man half openedhis eyes--'Daddy's going to put you to bye in the study. '

And he carried him in, the child breathing heavily against hisshoulder, and deposited his bundle on an old horsehair sofa in thecorner of his own room, turning the little face away from thelight, and wrapping up the bare legs. 

Then he sat down to his work. The room in which he sat was made forwork. It was walled with plain deal bookcases, which were filledfrom floor to ceiling, largely with foreign books, as the papercovers testified. 

For the rest, anyone looking round would have noticed a spaciouswriting-table in the window, a large and battered armchair besidethe fire, a photograph of Lucy over the mantelpiece, oddly flankedby an engraving of Goethe and the head of the German historianRanke, a folding cane chair which was generally used by Lucywhenever she visited the room, and the horsehair sofa, whereonSandy was now sleeping amid a surrounding litter of books andpapers which only just left room for his small person. If therewere other chairs and tables, they were covered deep in literatureof one kind or another, and did not count. The large window lookedon the garden, and the room opened at the back into thedrawing-room, and at one side into the dining-room. On the rugslept the short-haired black collie, whom David had once protectedfrom Louie's dislike--old, blind, and decrepit, but still beloved, especially by Sandy, and still capable of barking a toothlessdefiance at the outer world. 

It was a room to charm a student's eyes, especially on thisSeptember afternoon with its veiled and sleepy sun stealing in fromthe garden, and David fell into his chair, refilled his pipe, andstretched out his hand for a batch of manuscript which lay on histable, with an unconscious sigh of satisfaction. 

The manuscript represented a pamphlet on certain trade questionsby a young Oxford economist. For the firm of Grieve & Co. , ofManchester, had made itself widely known for some five years pastto the intelligence of northern England by its large and increasingtrade in pamphlets of a political, social, or economical kind. Theysupplied mechanics' institutes, political associations, andworkmen's clubs; nay, more, they had a system of hawkers of theirown, which bade fair to extend largely. To be taken up by Grieve &Co. Was already an object to young politicians, inventors, orsocial reformers, who might wish for one reason or another to bringtheir names or their ideas before the working-class of the North. And Grieve & Co. Meant David, sitting smoking and reading in hisarmchair. 

He gave the production now in his hands some careful reading forhalf an hour or more, then he suddenly threw it down. 

'Stuff and nonsense!' he said to himself. 'The man has got the factsabout those Oldham mills wrong somehow, I'm certain of it. Where'sthat letter I had last week?' and, jumping up, he took a bunch ofkeys out of his pocket and opened a drawer in his writing-table. The drawer contained mostly bundles of letters, and to the righthand a number of loose ones recently received, and not yet sortedor tied. He looked through these, found what he wanted, and wasabout to close the drawer when his attention was caught by a thickblack note-book lying towards the back of it. He took it out, reminded by it of something he had meant to do, and carried it offwith the Oldham letter to his chair. Once settled there again, heturned himself to the confutation of his pamphleteer. But not forlong. The black book on his knee exercised a disturbing influence;his under-mind began to occupy itself with it, and at last theOldham letter was hastily put down, and, taking out a pocket pen, David, with a smile at his own delinquency, opened the black book, turned over many closely written pages, and settled down to writeanother. 

The black book was his journal. He had kept it intermittently sincehis marriage, rather as a journal of thought than as a journal ofevents, and he had to add to it to-day some criticisms of a recentbook by Renan which had been simmering in his mind for a week ortwo. Still it contained a certain number of records of events, and, taken generally, its entries formed an epitome of everything ofmost import--practical, moral, or intellectual--which had enteredinto David Grieve's life during the eight years since his marriage. 

For instance:--

'_April_ 10, 1876. --Our son was born this morning betweenthree and four o'clock, after more than three years of marriage, when both of us had begun to despair a little. Now that he is come, I am decidedly interested in him, but the paternal relation hardlybegins at birth, as the mother's does. The father, who has sufferednothing, cannot shut his eyes to the physical ugliness andweakness, the clash of pain and effort, in which the future manbegins; the mother, who has suffered everything, seems by aspecial spell of nature to feel nothing after the birth but themystery and wonder of the _new creature_, the life born from herlife--flesh of her flesh--breath of her breath. Else why isLucy--who bears pain hardly, and had looked forward much lesseagerly to the child, I think, than I had--so proud and contentjust to lie with the hungry creature beside her? while I am halfinclined to say, What! so little for so much?--and to spend so fullan energy in resenting the pains of maternity as an unmeaning bloton the scheme of things, that I have none left for a more genialemotion. Altogether, I am disappointed in myself as a father. Iseem to have no imagination, and at present I would rather touch aloaded torpedo than my son. '

'_April 30_. --Lucy wishes to have the child christened at St. Damian's, and, though it goes against me, I have made no objection. And if she wishes it I shall go. It is not a question of one's ownpersonal consistency or sincerity. The new individuality seems tome to have a claim in the matter, which I have no business tooverride because I happen to think in this way or that. My son whenhe grows up may be an ardent Christian. Then, if I had failed tocomply with the national religious requirement, and had let him gounbaptized, because of my own beliefs or non-beliefs, he might, Ithink, rightly reproach me: "I was helpless, and you tookadvantage. "

'Education is different. The duty of the parent to hand on what isbest and truest in his own mind to the child is clear. Besides, the child goes on to carry what has been taught him into theopen _agora_ of the world's thought, and may there test itsvalue as he pleases. But the omission, in a sense irreparable, of a definite and customary act like baptism from a child'sexistence, when hereafter the omission may cause him a pang quitedisproportionate to any likes or dislikes of mine in the matter, appears to me unjust. 

'I talk as if Lucy were not concerned!--or Dora! In reality I shalldo as Lucy wills. Only they must not misunderstand me for thefuture. If my son lives, his father will not hide his heart fromhim. 

'I notice for the first time that Lucy is anxious and troubledabout _her_ father. She would like now to be friends, and shetook care that the news of the child's birth should be conveyed tohim at once through a common acquaintance. But he has taken nonotice. In some natures the seeds of affection seem to fall only onthe sand and rock of the heart, where because they have "no depthof earth they wither away;" while the seeds of hatred find the richand good ground, where they spring and grow a hundred-fold. '

'_December_ 8, 1877. --I have just been watching Sandy on therug between the two dogs--Tim, and the most adorable black and tan_dachshund_ that Lord Driffield has just given me. Sandy had abit of biscuit, and was teasing his friends--first thrusting itunder their noses, and then, just as they were preparing to gulp, drawing it back with a squeal of joy. The child's evident masteryand sense of humour, the grave puzzled faces of the dogs, delightedme. Then a whim seized me. I knelt down on the rug, and asked himto give me some. He held out the biscuit and laid it against mylips; I saw his eye waver; there was a gleam of mischief--thebiscuit was half snatched away, and I felt absurdly chagrined. Butin an instant the little face melted into the sweetest, keenestsmile, and he almost choked me in his eagerness to thrust thebiscuit down my throat. "Poor Daddy! Daddy _so_ hungry. "

'I recall with difficulty that I once thought him ugly andunattractive, poor little worm! On the contrary, it is quite clearthat, whatever he may be when he grows up--I don't altogether trusthis nose and mouth--for a child he is a beauty! His great browneyes--so dark and noticeable beneath the fair hair in the littleapple-blossom face--let you into the very heart of him. It is by nomeans a heart of unmixed goodness. There is a curious aloofness inhis look sometimes, as of some pure intelligence beholding good andevil with the same even speculative mind. But this strange moodbreaks up so humanly! he has such wiles--such soft wet kisses! sucha little flute of a voice when he wants to coax or propitiate you!'

'_March_ 1878. --My printing business has been growing verylargely lately. I have now worked out my profit-sharing scheme withsome minuteness, and yesterday the men, John, and I had aconference. In part, my plan is copied from that of the "MaisonLeclaire, " but I have worked a good deal of my own into it. OurEnglish experience of this form of industrial partnership has beenon the whole unfavourable; but, after a period of lassitude, experiments are beginning to revive. The great rock ahead lies inone's relation to the trade unions--one must remember that. 

'To the practised eye the men to-day showed signs of accepting itwith cordiality, but the north-country man is before all thingscautious, and I dare say a stranger would have thought them cooland suspicious. We meet again next week. 

'I must explain the thing to Lucy--it is her right. She may resentit vehemently, as she did my refusal, in the autumn, to takeadvantage of that London opening. It will, of course, restrict ourincome just as it was beginning to expand quickly. I have leftmyself adequate superintendence wages, a bonus on these wagescalculated in the same way as that of the men, a fixed percentageon the capital already employed in the business and a nominalthirty per cent, of the profits. But I can see plainly that howeverthe business extends, we--she and I--shall never "make our fortune"out of it. For beyond the fifty per cent, of the profits to beemployed in bonuses on wages, and the twenty per cent, set asidefor the benefit and pension society, my thirty per cent, mustprovide me with what I want for various purposes connected with thewell-being of the workers, and for the widening of our operationson the publishing side, in a more or less propagandist spirit. 

'My bookselling business proper is, of course, at present outsidethe scheme, and I do not see very well how anything of the kind canbe applied to it. This will be a comfort to Lucy; and just now thetrade both in old and foreign books is prosperous and brings me inlarge returns. But I cannot disguise from myself that the otherexperiment is likely to absorb more and more of my energiesin the future. I have from sixty to eighty men now in theprinting-office--a good set, take them altogether. They have beengradually learning to understand me and my projects. The story ofwhat Leclaire was able to do for the lives and characters of hismen is wonderful!

'My poor little wife! I try to explain these things to her, but shethinks that I am merely making mad experiments with money, teachingworkmen to be "uppish" and setting employers against me. When in myturn I do my best to get at what she means by "getting on, " I findit comes to a bigger house, more servants, a carriage, dinnerparties, and, generally, a move to London, bringing with it atotally new circle of acquaintance who need never know exactly whatshe or I rose from. She does not put all this into words, but Ithink I have given it accurately. 

'And I should yield a great deal more than I do if I had anyconviction that these things, when got, would make her happy. Butevery increase in our scale of living since we began has seemedrather to make her restless, and fill her with cravings which yetshe can never satisfy. In reality she lives by her affections, asmost women do. One day she wants to lose sight of everyone who knewher as Purcell's daughter, or me as Purcell's assistant; the nextshe is fretting to be reconciled to her father. In the same way, she thinks I am hard about money; she sees no attraction in thethings which fill me with enthusiasm; but at the same time, if Iwere dragged into a life where I was morally starved anddiscontented, she would suffer too. No, I must steer through--judgefor her and myself--and make life as pleasant to her in little waysas it can be made. 

'Ah! the gospel of "getting on"--it fills me with a kind of rage. There is an essential truth in it, no doubt, and if I had not beencarried away by it at one time, I should have far less power overcircumstances than I now have. But to square the whole of thismysterious complex life to it--to drop into the grave at last, having missed, because of it, all that sheds dignity and poetry onthe human lot, all that makes it worth while or sane to hope in adestiny for man diviner and more lasting than appears--horrible!

'Yet Lucy may rightly complain of me. I get dreamy--Iprocrastinate. And it is unjust to expect that her ideal of socialpleasure should be the same as mine. I ought to--and I will--makemore effort to please her. '

'_July_ 1878. --I am in Paris again. Yesterday afternoon Iwandered about looking at those wrecks of the Commune which yetremain. The new Hotel de Ville is rising, but the Tuileries stillstands charred and ruined against the sky, an object lesson forBelleville. I walked up to the Arc de l'Etoile, and coming back Istrolled into a little leafy open-air restaurant for a cup ofcoffee. Suddenly I recognised the place--the fountain--a largoquicksilver ball--a little wooden pavilion festooned with colouredlamps. It was as though eight years were wiped away. 

'I could not stay there. But the shock soon subsided. There issomething bewildering, de-personalising, in the difference betweenone stage of life and another. In certain moods I feel scarcely athread of identity between my present self and myself of eightyears ago. 

'This morning I have seen Louie, after an interval of three years. Montjoie keeps out of my way, and, as a matter of fact, I havenever set eyes on him since I passed him close to the Auteuilstation in July 1870. From Louie's account, he is now a confirmeddrunkard, and can hardly ever be got to do any serious work. Yetshe brought me a clay study of their little girl which he threw offin a lucid interval two or three months ago, surely as good asanybody or anything, astonishingly delicate and true. Just now, apparently, he has a bad fit on, and but for my allowance to hershe tells me they would be all but destitute. It is remarkable tosee how she has taken possession of this money and with whatshrewdness she manages it. I suspect her of certain small Boursespeculations--she has all the financial slang on the tip of hertongue--but if so, they succeed. For she keeps herself and thechild, scornfully allows him so much for his pocket in the week, and even, as I judge from the consideration she enjoys in thechurch she frequents, finds money for her own Catholic purposes. 

'Louie a fervent Catholic and an affectionate mother! The mixtureof old and new in her--the fresh habits of growth imposed on theoriginal plant--startle me at every turn. Her Catholicism, whichresolves itself, perhaps, into the cult of a particular church andof two or three admirable and sagacious priests, seems to me onelong intrigue of a comparatively harmless kind. It provides herwith enemies, allies, plots, battles, and surprises. It ministers, too, to her love of colour and magnificence--a love which impliesan artistic sense, and would have been utilised young if she hadbelonged to an artistic family. 

'But just as I am adapting myself to the new Louie the oldreappears! She was talking to me yesterday of her exertions atEaster for the Easter decorations, and describing to me insuperlatives the final splendour of the results, and thecompliments which had been paid her by one or two of the clergy, when the name of a lady who seems to have been connected with thechurch longer than Louie has, and is evidently her rival in variousmatters of pious service and charitable organisation, came to herlips. Instantly her face flamed, and the denunciation she launchedwas quite in the old Clough End and Manchester vein. I was tounderstand that this person was a mean, designing, worthlesscreature, a hideous object besides, and "made up, " and as to herendeavours to ingratiate herself with Father this and Father that, the worst motives were hinted at. 

'Another little incident struck me more painfully still. Herdevotion to the little Cecile is astonishing. She is miserable whenthe child has a finger-ache, and seems to spend most of her time indressing and showing her off. Yet I suspect she is often irritableand passionate even with Cecile; the child has a shrinking quietway with her which is not natural. And today, when she was in themiddle of cataloguing Montjoie's enormities, and I was trying torestrain her, remembering that Cecile was looking at a book on theother side of the room, she suddenly called to the childimperiously:

'"Cecile! come here and tell your uncle what your father is!"

'And, to my horror, the little creature walked across to us, and, as though she were saying a lesson, began to _debiter_ a setspeech about her father's crimes and her mother's wrongs, containing the wildest abuse of her father, and prompted throughoutby the excited and scarlet Louie. I tried to stop it; but Louieonly pushed me away. The child rose to her part, became perfectlywhite, declaimed with a shrill fury, indescribably repulsive, andat the end sank into a chair, hardly able to stand. Then Louiecovered her with kisses, made me get wine for her, and held hercradled in her arms till it was time for them to go. 

'On the way downstairs, when Cecile was in front of us, I spoke mymind about this performance in the strongest way. But Louie onlylaughed at me. "It shall be quite plain that she is _mine_ andnot his! I don't run away from him; I keep him from dying on thestreets like a dog; but his child and everyone else shall know whathe is. "

'It is a tigress passion. Poor little child!--a thin, brown, large-eyed creature, with rather old, affected manners, and a smallclinging hand. '

'_July_ 4 _th_. --Father Lenoir, Louie's director, hasjust been to call upon me; Louie insisted on my going to a festivalservice at St. Eulalie this morning, and introduced me to him--anelderly, courteous, noble-faced priest of a fine type. He wasdiscreet, of course, and made me feel the enormous difference thatexists between an outsider and a member of the one flock. But Igathered that the people among whom she is now thrown perfectlyunderstand Louie. By means of the subtle and powerful discipline ofthe Church, a discipline which has absorbed the practical wisdom ofgenerations, they have established a hold upon her. And they workon her also through the child. But he gave me to understand thatthere had been crises; that the opportunities for and temptationsto dissolute living which beset Montjoie's wife were endless; andit was a marvel that under such circumstances a being so wild hadyet kept straight. 

'I shook him warmly by the hand at parting, and thanked him from myheart. He somewhat resented my thanks, I thought. They imported, perhaps, a personal element into what he regards as a matter ofpure ecclesiastical practice and duty. '

'_December_ 25 _th_, 1878. --Lucy is still asleep; therest of the house is just stirring. I am in my study looking out onthe snowy garden and the frosted trees, which are as yet fair andwhite, though in a few hours the breath of Manchester will havepolluted them. 

'Last night I went with Lucy and Dora to the midnight service atSt. Damian's. It pleased them that I went; and I thought theservice, with its bells, its resonant _Adeste fideles_, andits white flowers, singularly beautiful and touching. And yet, intruth, I was only happy in it because I was so far removed from it;because the legend of Bethlehem and the mythology of the Trinityare no longer matters of particular interest or debate with me;because after a period of three-fourths assent, followed by onelasting over years of critical analysis and controversial reading, I have passed of late into a conception of Christianity far morepositive, fruitful, and human than I have yet held. I would fainbelieve it the Christianity of the future. But the individual mustbeware lest he wrap his personal thinking in phrases too large forit. 

'Yet, at least, one may say that it is a conception which has beengaining more and more hold on the minds of those who during thepresent century have thought most deeply, and laboured mostdisinterestedly in the field of Christian antiquity--who havesought with most learning and with fewest hindrances fromcircumstance to understand Christianity, whether as a history or asa philosophy. 

'I have read much German during the past year, and of late a bookreviewing the whole course of religious thought in Germany sinceSchleiermacher, with a mixture of exhaustive information andbrilliant style most unusual in a German, has absorbed all my sparehours. Such a movement!--such a wealth of collective labour andindividual genius thrown into it--producing offshoots and echoesthroughout the world, transforming opinion with the slowinevitableness which belongs to all science, possessing already agreat past and sure of a great future. 

'In the face of it, our orthodox public, the contented ignorance ofour clergy, the solemn assurance of our religious press--whatcurious and amazing phenomena! Yet probably the two worlds havetheir analogues in every religion; and what the individual has tolearn in these days at once of outward debate and of unifyingsocial aspiration, is "to dissent no longer with the heat of anarrow antipathy, but with the quiet of a large sympathy. "'

CHAPTER II

A few days after Lord Driffield's warm invitation to Mr. And Mrs. David Grieve to spend an October Saturday-to-Monday at Benet's Parkhad been accepted, Lucy was sitting in the September dusk puttingsome frills into Sandy's Sunday coat, when the door opened and Dorawalked in. 

'You do look done!' said Lucy, as she held up her cheek to hercousin's salutation. 'What have you been about?'

'They kept me late at the shop, for a Saturday, ' said Dora, with asigh of fatigue, 'and since then I've been decorating. It's theDedication Festival to-morrow. '

'Well, the festivals don't do _you_ any good, ' said Lucy, emphatically; 'they always tire you to death. When you do get tochurch, I don't believe you can enjoy anything. Why don't you letother people have a turn now, after all these years? There's MissBarham, and Charlotte Corfield, and Mrs. Willan--they'd all do agreat deal more if you didn't do so much. I know that. '

Lucy's cool bright eye meant, indeed, that she had heard someremarks made of late with regard to Dora's position at St. Damian'ssomewhat unfavourable to her cousin. It was said that she wasjealous of co-operation or interference on the part of new membersof the congregation in the various tasks she had been accustomedfor years past to lay upon herself in connection with the church. She was universally held to be extraordinarily good; but both inthe large shop, where she was now forewoman, and at St. Damian's, people were rather afraid of her, and inclined to head oppositionsto her. A certain severity had grown upon her; she was moreself-confident, though it was a self-confidence grounded always onthe authority of the Church; and some parts of the nature which attwenty had been still soft and plastic were now tending torigidity. 

At Lucy's words she flushed a little. 

'How can they know as well as I what has to be done?' she said withenergy. 'The chancel screen is _beautiful_, Lucy--all yellowfern and heather. You must go to-morrow, and take Sandy. '

As she spoke she threw off her waterproof and unloosed the stringsof her black bonnet. Her dark serge dress with its white turn-downcollar and armlets--worn these last for the sake of her embroiderywork--gave her a dedicated conventual look. She was paler than ofold; the eyes, though beautiful and luminous, were no longer young, and lines were fast deepening in the cheeks and chin, with theirround childish moulding. What had been _naivete_ and tremuloussweetness at twenty, was now conscious strength and patience. Thecountenance had been fashioned--and fashioned nobly--by life; butthe tool had cut deep, and had not spared the first grace of thewoman in developing the saint. The hands especially, the long thinhands defaced by the labour of years, which met yours in a grasp sofull of purpose and feeling, told a story and symbolised acharacter. 

'David won't come, ' said Lucy, in answer to Dora's last remark; 'hehardly ever goes anywhere now unless he hears of some one going topreach that he thinks he'll like. '

'No--I know, ' said Dora. A shade came over her face. The attitudeof David Grieve towards religion during the last four or five yearsrepresented to her the deep disappointment of certain eager hopes, perhaps one might almost call them ambitions, of her missionaryyouth. The disappointment had brought a certain bitterness with it, though for long years she had been sister and closest friend toboth David and his wife. And it had made her doubly sensitive withregard to Lucy, whom she had herself brought over from the Baptistcommunion to the Church, and Sandy, who was her godchild. 

After a pause, she hesitatingly brought a small paper book out ofthe handbag she carried. 

'I brought you this, Lucy. Father Russell sent it you. He thinks itthe best beginning book you can have. He always gives it in theparish; and if the mothers will only use it, it makes it so mucheasier to teach the children when they come to Sunday school. '

Lucy took it doubtfully. It was called 'The Mother's Catechism;'and, opening it, she saw that it contained a series of questionsand answers, as between a mother and a child. 

'I don't think Sandy would understand it, ' she said, slowly, as sheturned it over. 

'Oh yes, he would!' said Dora, eagerly. 'Why, he's nearly five, Lucy. It's really time you began to teach him something--unless youwant him to grow up a little heathen!'

The last words had a note of indignation. Lucy took no notice. Shewas still turning over the book. 

'And I don't think David will like it, ' she said, still more slowlythan before. 

Dora flushed. 

'He can't want to keep Sandy from being taught any religion at all!It wouldn't be fair to you--or to the child. And if he won't do it, if he isn't certain enough about what he thinks, how can he mindyour doing it?'

'I don't know, ' said Lucy, and paused. 'I sometimes think, ' she wenton, with more energy, 'that David will be quite different some dayfrom what he has been. I'm sure he'll want to teach Sandy. '

'He's got nothing to teach him!' cried Dora. Then she added inanother voice--a voice of wounded feeling--'If he was to be broughtup an atheist, I don't think David ought to have asked me to begodmother. '

'He shan't be brought up an atheist, ' exclaimed Lucy startled. Then, feeling the subject too much for her--for it provoked in hera mingled train of memories which she had not words enough toexpress--she turned back to her work, leaving the book on the tableand the discussion pending. 

'David's dreadfully late, ' she said, discontentedly, looking at theclock. 

'Where is he?'

'Down in Ancoats, I expect. He told me he had a committee thereto-day after work, about those houses he's going to pull down. He'sgot Mr. Buller and Mr. Haycraft--and'--Lucy named some half-dozenmore rich and well-known men--'to help him, and they're going topull down one of the worst bits of James Street, David says, andbuild up new houses for working people. He's wild about it. Oh, Iknow we'll have no money at all left soon!' cried Lucy indignantly, with a shrug of her small shoulders. 

Dora smiled at what seemed to her a childish petulance. 

'Why, I'm sure you've got everything very nice, Lucy, and all youwant. '

'No, indeed, I _haven't_ got all I want, ' said Lucy, lookingup and frowning; 'I never shall, neither. I want David to be--tobe--like everybody else. He might be a rich man to-morrow if hewouldn't have such ideas. He doesn't think a bit about me andSandy. I told you what would happen when he made that divisionbetween the bookselling and the printing, and took up withthose ideas about the men. I knew he'd come not to care aboutthe bookselling. And I was _perfectly_ right! There's thatprinting-office getting bigger and bigger, and crowds of menwaiting to be taken on, and such a lot of business doing as neverwas. And are we a bit the richer? Not a penny--or hardly. It'ssickening to hear the way people talk about him! Why, they say thelast election wouldn't have been nearly so good for the Liberalsall about the North if it hadn't been for the things he's alwayspublishing and the two papers he started last year. He might be amember of Parliament any day, and he wouldn't be a member ofParliament--not he! He told me he didn't care twopence about it. No, he doesn't care for anything but just taking _our_ moneyand giving it to other people--there! You may say what you like, but it's true. '

The wilful energy with which Lucy spoke the last words transformedthe small face--brought out the harder lines on it. 

'Well, I never know what it is that _you_ want exactly, ' saidDora. 'I don't think you do yourself. '

Lucy stitched silently, her thin red lips pressed together. Sheknew perfectly well what she wanted, only she was ashamed toconfess it to the religious and ascetic Dora. Her ideal of livingWas filled in with images and desires abundantly derived fromManchester life, where every day she saw people grow rich rapidly, and rise as a matter of course into that upper region of gentility, carriages, servants, wines, and grouse-moors, whither, ever sinceit had become plain to her that David could, if he chose, easilyplace her there, it had been her constant craving to go. Otherpeople came to be gentlefolks and lord it over the land--why notthey? It made her mad, as she had said to Dora, to see _their_money--their very own money--chucked away to other people, and theygetting no good of it, and remaining mere working booksellers andprinters as before. 

'Why don't you go and help him?' said Dora suddenly. 'Perhaps ifyou were to go right in and see what he's doing, you wouldn't mindit so much. You might get to like it. He doesn't want to keepeverything to himself--he wants to share with those that need. Ifthere were a good many others like that, perhaps there'd be fewerawful things happening down at Ancoats. '

A sigh rose to her lips. Her beautiful eyes grew sad. 

'Well, I did try once or twice, ' said Lucy, pettishly, 'but I'vealways told you that sort of thing isn't in my line. Of course Iunderstand about giving away, and all that. But he'll hardly letyou give away at all! He says it's pauperising the people. And thethings he wants me to do--I never seem to do 'em right, and I can'tget to care a bit about them. '

The tone in her voice betrayed a past experience which had been insome way trying and discouraging to a fine natural vanity. 

Dora did not answer. She played absently with the little book onthe table. 

'Oh! but he's going to let us accept the invitation to Benet'sPark--I didn't tell you that, ' said Lucy suddenly, her faceclearing. 

Dora was startled. 

'Why, I thought you told me he wouldn't go?'

'So I did. But--well, I let out!' said Lucy, colouring. 

He's changed his mind. But I'm rather in a fright, Dora, though Idon't tell him. Think of that big house and all those servants--I'mmore frightened of _them_ than of anybody! I say, _do_ you thinkmy new dresses'll do? You'll come up and look at them, won't you?Not that you're much use about dresses. '

Dora was profoundly interested and somewhat bewildered. That herlittle cousin Lucy, Purcell's daughter and Daddy's niece, should begoing to stay as an invited guest in a castle, with an earl andcountess, was very amazing. Was it because the Radicals had got theupper hand so much at the election? She could not understand it, but some of her old girlishness, her old interest in small womanishtrifles, came back upon her, and she discussed the details of whatLucy might expect so eagerly that Lucy was quite delighted withher. 

In the middle of their talk a step was heard in the hall. 

'Ah, there he is!' said Lucy; 'now we'll ring for supper, and I'llgo and get ready. '

Dora sat alone for a few minutes, and then David came in. 

'Ah! Dora, this is nice. Lucy says you will stay to supper. We getso busy, you and I, we see each other much too seldom. '

He spoke in his most cordial, brotherly tone, and, standing on therug with his back to the fire, he looked down upon her with evidentpleasure. 

As for her, though the throb of her young passion had been so soonand so sternly silenced, it was still happiness to her to be in thesame room with David Grieve, and any unusual kindness from him, ora long talk with him, would often send her back to her little roomin Ancoats stored with a cheerful warmth of soul which helped herthrough many days. For of late years she had been more liable thanof old to fits of fretting--fretting about her father, about herown sins and other people's, about the little worries of herSunday-school class, or the little rubs of church work. Thecontact with a nature so large and stimulating, though sometimesit angered and depressed her through the influence of religiousconsiderations, was yet on the whole of infinite service to her, ofmore service than she knew. 

'Have you forgiven me for upsetting Sandy?' she asked him, with asmile. 

'I'm on the way to it. I left him just now prancing about Lucy'sbed, and making an abominable noise. She told him to be quiet, whereupon he indignantly informed her that he was "a dwagon huntingwats. " So I imagine he hasn't had "the wrong dinner" today. '

They both laughed. 

'And you have been in Ancoats?'

'Yes, ' said David, tossing back his black hair with an animatedgesture, and thrusting his hands into his pockets. 'Yes--we aregetting on. We have got the whole of that worst James Street courtinto our hands. We shall begin pulling down directly, and the plansfor the new buildings are almost ready. And we have told all theold tenants that they shall have a prior claim on the new rooms ifthey choose to come back. Some will; for a good many others ofcourse we shall be too respectable, though I am set on keeping theplans as simple and the rents as low as possible. '

Dora sat looking at him with somewhat perplexed eyes. 

Her Christianity had been originally of the older High Church type, wherein the ideal of personal holiness had not yet been fused withthe ideal of social service. The care of the poor and needy was, ofcourse, indispensable to the Christian life; but she thought firstand most of bringing them to church, and to the blessing andefficacy of the sacraments; then of giving them money when theywere sick, and assuring to them the Church's benediction in dying. The modern fuss about overcrowded houses and insanitaryconditions--the attack on bricks and mortar--the preaching oftemperance, education, thrift--these things often seemed toChristian people of Dora's type and day, if they spoke their trueminds, to be tinged with atheism and secularism. They were jealousall the time for something better. They instinctively felt that thepreeminence of certain ideas, most dear to them, was threatened bythis absorption in the detail of the mere human life. 

Something of this it was that passed vaguely through Dora's mind asshe sat listening to David's further talk about his Ancoats scheme;and at last, influenced, perhaps, by a half-conscious realisationof her demur--it was only that--he let it drop. 

'What is that book?' he said, his quick eye detecting the littlepaper-covered volume on Lucy's table. And, stepping forward, hetook it up. 

Dora unexpectedly found her voice a little husky as she replied, and had to clear her throat. 

'It is a book I brought for Lucy. Sandy is a baptized Christian, David. Lucy wants to teach him, so I brought her this littleCatechism, which Father Russell recommends. '

David turned the book over in silence. He read a passage concerningthe Virgin Mary; another, in which the child asked about the numberand names of the Archangels, gave a detailed answer; another inwhich Dissenters were handled with an acrimony which contrastedwith a general tone of sweetness and unction. 

David laid it down on the mantelpiece. 

'No, Dora, I can't have Sandy taught out of this. '

He spoke with dignity, but with an endeavour to make his tone asgentle as possible. 

Dora was silent a moment; then she broke out:

'What will you teach him, then? Is he to be a Christian at all?'

'In a sense, yes; with all my heart, yes! so far, at least, as hisfather has any share in the matter. '

'And is his mother to have no voice?' Dora went on with growingbitterness and hurry. 'And as for me--why did you let me be hisgodmother? I take it seriously, and I may do nothing. '

'You may do everything, ' he said, sitting down beside her, 'exceptteach him extreme matter of this kind, which, because I am what Iam, will make a critic of the child before his time. I am not abigot, Dora! I shall not interfere with Lucy; she would not teachhim in this way. She talks to him; and she instinctively feels forme, and what she says comes softly and vaguely to him. It isdifferent with things like this, set down in black and white, andto be learnt by heart. You must remember that half of it seems tome false history, and some of it false morals. '

He looked at her anxiously. The jarring note was hateful to him. Hehad always taken for granted that Lucy was under Dora's influencereligiously--had perhaps made it an excuse for a gradual withdrawalof his inmost mind from his wife, which in reality rested on quiteother reasons. But his heart was full of dreams about his son. Hecould not let Dora have her way there. 

'Oh, how different it is, ' cried Dora, in a low, intense voice, twining her hands together, 'from what I once thought!'

'No!' he said, vehemently, 'there is no real difference between youand me--there never can be; teach Sandy to be good and to love you!That's what I should like!'

His eyes were full of emotion, but he smiled. Dora, however, couldnot respond. The inner tension was too strong. She turned away, andbegan fidgeting with Lucy's workbag. 

Then a small voice and a preparatory turmoil were heard outside. 

'Auntie Dora! Auntie Dora!' cried Sandy, rushing in with a hop, skip, and a jump, and flourishing a picture-book, 'look at zesepickers! Dat's a buffalo--most es _tror_ nary animal, thebuffalo!'

'Come here, rascal!' called his father, and the child ran up tohim. David knelt to look at the picture, but the little fellowsuddenly dropped it and his interest in it, in a way habitual tohim, twined one arm round his father's neck, laid his cheek againstDavid's, crossed one foot over the other, and, thumb in mouth, looked Dora up and down with his large, observant eyes. 

Dora, melted, wooed him to come to her. Her adoration of him wasalmost on a level with David's. Sandy took a minute to thinkwhether he should leave his father. Then he climbed her knee, andpatronised her on the subject of buffaloes and giraffes--'I tan't'splain everything to you, Auntie Dora; you'll now when you'reolder'--till Lucy and supper came together. And supper wasbrightened both by Lucy's secret content in the prospect of theBenet's Park visit and by the child's humours. When Dora said goodnight to her host, their manner to each other had its usualfraternal quality. Nevertheless, the woman carried away with herboth resentment and distress. 

About a fortnight later David and Lucy started one fine Octoberafternoon for Benet's Park. The cab was crowded with Lucy'sluggage, and David, in new clothes to please his wife, felthimself, as the cab door closed upon them, a trapped and miserableman. 

What had possessed Lord Driffield to send that unlucky note? ForLord Driffield himself David had a grateful and real affection. Ever since that whimsical scholar had first taken kindly notice ofthe boy-tradesman, there had been a growing friendship between thetwo; and of late years Lord Driffield's interest in David'sdevelopment and career had become particularly warm and cordial. Hehad himself largely contributed to the subtler sides of thatdevelopment, had helped to refine the ambitions and raise thestandards of the growing intellect; his advice, owing to hislifelong commerce with and large possession of books, had oftenbeen of great practical use to the young man; his library had foryears been at David's service, both for reference and borrowing;and he had supplied his favourite with customers and introductionsin a large percentage of the University towns both at home andabroad, a social _milieu_ where Lord Driffield was more athome and better appreciated than in any other. The small delicatelyfeatured man, whose distinguished face, with its abundant waves ofsilky hair--once ruddy, now a goldenish white--presided so oddlyover an incorrigible shabbiness of dress, had become a familiarfigure in David's life. Their friendship, of course, was limited toa very definite region of thought and relation; but theycorresponded freely, when they were apart, on matters ofliterature, bibliography, sometimes of politics; and no sooner wasthe Earl at Benet's Park than David had constant calls from him inhis office at the back of the now spacious and importantestablishment in Prince's Street. 

But Lord Driffield, as we know, had managed his mind better thanhis marriage, and his _savoir vivre_ was no match for hislearning. He bore his spouse and his country-gentleman lifepatiently enough in general; but every now and then he fell intoexasperation. His wife flooded him too persistently, perhaps, withcousins and grandees of the duller sort, whose ideas seemed to himas raw as their rent-rolls were large--till he rebelled. Then hewould have _his_ friends; selecting them more or less atrandom from up and down the ranks of literature and science, tillLady Driffield raised her eyebrows, invited a certain number of herown set to keep her in countenance, and made up her mind to endure. At the end of the ordeal Lord Driffield generally made the ruefulreflection that it had not gone off well. But he felt the betterand digested the better for the self-assertion of it, and it wasperiodically renewed. 

David and Lucy Grieve had been asked in some such moment ofdomestic annoyance. The Earl had seen 'Grieve's wife' twice, andhastily remembered that she seemed 'a presentable little person. 'He was constitutionally indifferent to and contemptuous of women. But he imagined that it would please David to bring his wife; andhe was perhaps tolerably certain, since no one, be he rake orsavant, possesses an historical name and domain without knowing it, that it would please the bookseller's wife to be invited. 

David suspected a good deal of this, for he knew his man prettywell. As he sat opposite to Lucy in the railway carriage--first-class, since she felt it incongruous to go in anythingelse--he recalled certain luncheons at Benet's Park, whenhe had been doing a bit of work in the library during the familysojourn. Certainly Lucy did not realise at all how formidable thesearistocratic women could be!

And his pride--at bottom the workman's pride--was madeuncomfortable by his wife's _newness_. New hat, new dress, newgloves! Himself too! It annoyed him that Lady Driffield should beso plainly informed that great pains had been taken for her. Hefelt irritable and out of gear. Being neither self-conscious norawkward, he became both for the moment, out of sympathy with Lucy. 

Yet Lucy was supremely happy as they sped along to Stalybridge. Suppose her father heard of it! She could no doubt insure hisknowing; but it might set his back up still more, make him more madthan before with her and David. Eight years and more since he hadspoken to her, and the other day, when he had seen her coming inDeansgate, he had crossed to the other side of the street!--Werethose sleeves of her evening dress quite right? They were notcaught down, she thought, quite in the right place. No doubt therewould be time before dinner to put in a stitch. And she did hopethat pleat from the neck would look all right. It was peculiar, butMiss Helby had assured her it was much worn. Would there be manytitled people, she wondered, and would all the ladies weardiamonds? She thought disconsolately of the little black enamelledlocket and the Roman pearls, which were all the adornments shepossessed. 

After a short journey they alighted at their station as the duskwas beginning. 

'Are you for Benet's Park, m'm?' said the porter to Lucy. 'Allright!--the carriage is just outside. '

Lucy held herself an inch taller, and waited for David to come backfrom the van with their two new portmanteaus. 

Meanwhile she noticed two other groups of people, whose bags andrugs were being appropriated by a couple of powdered footmen--ahusband and wife, and a tall military-looking man accompanied bytwo ladies. The two ladies belonged to the height of fashion--ofthat Lucy was certain, as she stole an intimidated glance at thecut of their tailor-made gowns and the costliness of the fur cloakwhich one of them carried. As for the other lady, could she also beon her way to Benet's Park--with this uncouth figure, this mannishheight and breadth, this complete lack of waist, these large armsand hands, and the over-ample garments and hat, of green cashmereslashed with yellow, in which she was marvellously arrayed? Yet sheseemed entirely at her ease, which was more than Lucy was, and herlittle dark husband was already talking with the tall ladies. 

David, having captured the luggage, was accosted by one of thefootmen, who then came up to Lucy and took her bag. She and Davidfollowed in his wake, and found themselves mingling with the otherfive persons, who were clearly to be their fellow-guests. 

As they stood outside the station door, the elder of the two ladiesturned and ran a scrutinising eye over Lucy and the person in sagegreen following her; then she said rapidly to the gentleman withher:

'Now, remember Mathilde can't go outside, and I prefer to have herwith me. '

'Well I suppose there'll be room in the omnibus, ' said he, shortly. 'I shall go in the dog-cart and get a smoke. By George! those aregood horses of Driffield's! And they are not the pair I sent himover from Ireland in the autumn either. '

He went down the steps, patted and examined the horses, and threw aword or two to the coachman. Lucy, palpitating with excitement andalarm, felt a corresponding awe of the person who could venturesuch familiarities even with the servants and live-stock of Benet'sPark. 

The servant let down the steps of the smart omnibus with itsimpatient steeds. The two tall ladies got in. 

'Mathilde!' called the elder. 

A little maid, dressed in black, and carrying a large dressing-bag, hurried down the steps before the remaining guests, and was helpedin by the footman. The lady in sage green smiled at her husband--asleepy, humorous smile. Then she stepped in, the footman touchinghis hat to her as though he knew her. 

'Any maid, m'm?' said the man to Lucy, as she was following. 

'No--oh _no!_' said Lucy, stumbling in. 'Give me my bag, please. '

The man gave it to her, and timidly looking round her she settledherself in the smallest space and the remotest corner she could. 

When the carriage rolled off, the lady in green looked out ofwindow for a while at the dark flying fields and woods, over whichthe stars were beginning to come out. 

'Are you a stranger in these parts, or do you know Benet's Parkalready?' she said presently to Lucy, who was next her, in apleasant, nonchalant way. 

'I have never been here before, ' said Lucy, dreading somehow thesound of her own voice; 'but my husband is well acquainted with thefamily. '

She was pleased with her own phrase, and began to recover herself. The lady said no more, however, but leant back and apparently wentto sleep. The tall ladies presently did the same. Lucy's depressionreturned as the silence lasted. She supposed that it wasaristocratic not to talk to people till you had been introduced tothem. She hoped she would be introduced when they reached Benet'sPark. Otherwise it would be awkward staying in the same house. 

Then she fell into a dream, imagining herself with a maid--orderingher about deliciously--saying to the handsome footman, 'My maid hasmy wraps'--and then with the next jolt of the carriage waking up tothe humdrum and unwelcome reality. And David might be as rich asanybody! Familiar resentments and cravings stirred in her, and herdrive became even less of a pleasure than before. As for David, hespent the whole of it in lively conversation with the small darkman, beside the window. 

The carriage paused a moment. Then great gates were swung back andin they sped, the horses stepping out smartly now that they werewithin scent of home. There was a darkness as of thick and loftytrees, then dim opening stretches of park; lastly a huge house, mirage-like in the distance, with rows of lighted windows, acrackling of crisp gravel, the sound of the drag, and a pomp ofopening doors. 

'Shall I take your bag, Madam?' said a magnificent person, bendingtowards Lucy, as, clinging to her possession, she followed the ladyin green into the outer hall. 

'Oh no, thank you! at least, shall I find it again?' said thefrightened Lucy, looking in front of her at the vast hall, with itstall lamps and statues and innumerable doors. 

'It shall be sent upstairs for you, Madam, ' said the magnificentperson gravely, and, as Lucy thought, severely. 

She submitted, and looked round for David. Oh, where was he?

'This is a fine hall, isn't it?' said the lady in green beside her. 'Bad period--but good of its kind. What on earth do they spoil itfor with those shocking modern portraits?'

Such assurance--combined with such garments--in such a house--itwas nothing short of a miracle!

CHAPTER III

'Now, Lavinia, do be kind to young Mrs. Grieve. She is evidently asshy as she can be. '

So spoke Lord Driffield, with some annoyance in his voice, as helooked into his wife's room after dressing for dinner. 

'I suppose she can amuse herself like other people, ' said LadyDriffield. She was standing by the fire warming a satin-shoed foot. 'I have told Williams to leave all the houses open tomorrow. Andthere's church, and the pictures. The Danbys and the rest of us aregoing over to Lady Herbart's for tea. '

A cloud came over Lord Driffield's face. He made some impatientexclamation, which was muffled by his white beard and moustache, and walked back to his own room. 

Meanwhile Lucy, in another corridor of the great house, wasstanding before a long glass, looking herself up and down in atumult of excitement and anxiety. 

She had just passed through a formidable hour! In a great gallery, with polished floor, and hung with portraits of ancestralDriffields, the party from the station had found Lady Driffield, with five or six other people, who seemed to be already staying inthe house. Though the butler had preceded them, no names but thoseof Lady Venetia Danby and Miss Danby had been announced; and whenLady Driffield, a tall effective-looking woman with a cold eye andan expressionless voice, said a short 'How do you do?' and extendeda few fingers to David and his wife, no names were mentioned, andLucy felt a sudden depressing conviction that no names were needed. To the mistress of the house they were just two nonentities, towhom she was to give bed and board for two nights to gratify herhusband's whims; whether their insignificant name happened to beGrieve, or Tompkins, or Johnson, mattered nothing. 

So Lucy had sat down in a subdued state of mind, and was handed teaby a servant, while the Danbys--Colonel Danby, after his smoke inthe dog-cart, following close on the heels of his wife anddaughter--mixed with the group round the tea-table, and muchchatter, combined with a free use of Christian names, liberalpetting of Lady Driffield's Pomeranian, and an account by MissDanby of an accident to herself in the hunting-field, filled up ahalf-hour which to one person, at least, had the qualities of anightmare. David was talking to the lady in green--to whom, by theway, Lady Driffield had been distinctly civil. Once he came over torelieve Lucy from a waterproof which was on her knee, and to gether some bread and butter. But otherwise no one took any notice ofher, and she fell into a nervous terror lest she should upset hercup, or drop her teaspoon, or scatter her crumbs on the floor. 

Then at last Lord Driffield, who had been absent on some countrybusiness, which his soul loathed, had come in, and with thecordiality, nay, affection of his greeting to David, and thekindness of his notice of herself, little Lucy's spirits had risenat a bound. She felt instinctively that a protector had arrived, and even the formidable procession upstairs in the wake of LadyDriffield, when the moment at last arrived for showing the gueststo their rooms, had passed off safely, Lucy throwing out anagitated 'Thank you!' when Lady Driffield had even gone so far asto open a door with her own bediamonded hand, which had Mrs. Grieve's plebeian appellations written in full upon the cardattached to it. 

And now? Was the dress nice? Would it do? Unluckily, since Lucy'srise in the social scale which had marked the last few years, thesureness of her original taste in dress had somewhat deserted her. Her natural instinct was for trimness and closeness; but of lateher ideals had been somewhat confused by a new and more importantdressmaker with 'aesthetic' notions, who had been recommended toher by the good-natured and artistic wife of one of the Collegeprofessors. Under the guidance of this expert, she had chosen a'Watteau _sacque_' from a fashion-plate, not quite daring, little tradesman's daughter as she felt herself at bottom, toventure on the undisguised low neck and short sleeves of ordinaryfashionable dress. 

She said fretfully to herself that she could see nothing in thisvast room. More and more candles did she light with a tremblinghand, trusting devoutly that no one would come in and discover herwith such an extravagant illumination. Then she tried each of thetwo long glasses of the room in turn. Her courage mounted. It_was_ pretty. The terra-cotta shade was _exquisite, _ and_no_ one could tell that the satin was cotton-backed. Theflowing sleeves and the pleat from the shoulder gave her dignity, she was certain; and she had done her hair beautifully. She wishedDavid would come in and see! But his room was across a littlelanding, which, indeed, seemed to be all their own, for it was shutoff from the passage they had entered from by an outer door. Therewas, however, more than one door opening on to the landing, andLucy was so much afraid of her surroundings that she preferred towait till he came. 

Meanwhile--what a bedroom! Why, it was more gorgeous than anydrawing-room she had ever entered. Every article of furniture wasof old marqueterie, adapted to modern uses, the appointments of thewriting-table were of solid silver--Lucy had eagerly ascertainedthe fact by looking at the 'marks'--and as for the _towels_, she simply could not have imagined that such things were made! Herlittle soul was in a whirl of envy, admiration, pride. What talesshe would have to tell Dora when they got home!

'Are you ready?' said David, opening the door. 'I believe I hearpeople going downstairs. '

He came in arrayed in the new dress suit which became him as wellas anything else; for he had a natural dignity which absorbed andsurmounted any novelty of circumstance or setting, and was purely amatter of character, depending upon a mind familiar with largeinterests and launched towards ideal aims. He might be silent, melancholy, impracticable, but never meanly self-conscious. It hadrarely occurred to anyone to pity or condescend to David Grieve. 

Lucy looked at him with uneasy pride. Then she glanced back at herown reflection in the glass. 

'What do you think of it?' she asked him, eagerly. 

'Magnificent!' said David, with all the sincerity ofignorance--wishing, moreover, to make his wife pleased withherself. 'But oughtn't you to have gloves instead of those things?'

He pointed doubtfully to the mittens on her arms. 

'Oh, David, don't say that!' cried Lucy, in despair. 'Miss Helbysaid these were the right things. It's to be like an old picture, don't you understand? And I haven't got any gloves but those I camein. Oh, don't be so disagreeable!'

She looked ready to cry. Poor David hastened to declare that MissHelby must be right, and that it was all very nice. Then they blewout the candles and ventured forth. 

'Lord Driffield says that Canon Aylwin is coming, ' said David, examining some Hollar engravings on the wall of the staircase asthey descended, 'and the Dean of Bradford, who is staying with him. I shall be glad to see Canon Aylwin. '

His face took a pleased meditative look. He was thinking of CanonAylwin's last volume of essays--of their fine scholarship, theirdelicate, unique qualities of style. As for Lucy, it seemed to herthat all the principalities and powers of this world were somehowarraying themselves against her in that terrible drawing-room theywere so soon to enter. She set her teeth, held up her bead, and onthey went. 

Presently they found themselves approaching a glass door, whichopened into the central hall. Beyond it was a crowd of figures anda buzz of talk, and at the door stood a tall person in black withwhite gloves, holding a silver tray, from which he presented Davidwith a button-hole. Then, with a manner at once suave andimpersonal, he held open the door, and the husband and wife passedthrough. 

'Ah, my dear Grieve, ' said Lord Driffield, laying his hand onDavid's shoulder, 'come here and be introduced to Canon Aylwin. I amdelighted to have caught him for you. '

So David was swept away to the other side of the room, and Lucy wasleft forlorn and stranded. It seemed to her an immense party; therewere at least eight or ten fresh faces beyond those she had seenalready. And just as she was looking for a seat into which shemight slip and hide herself, Lady Venetia Danby, who was standingnear, playing with a huge feather fan and talking to a handsomeyoung man, turned around by chance and, seeing the figure in thebright-coloured 'Watteau _sacque_, ' involuntarily put up hereyeglass to look at it. Instantly Lucy, conscious of the eyeglass, and looking hurriedly round on the people near, was certain thatthe pleat from the shoulder and the mittens were irretrievablywrong and conspicuous, and that she had betrayed herself at once byher dress as an ignoramus and an outsider. Worst of all, the ladyin green was in a _sacque_ too!--a shapeless yellow thing ofthe most untutored and detestable make. Mittens also! drawnlaboriously over the hands and arms of an Amazon. Lucy glanced atMiss Danby beside her, then at a beautiful woman in pale pinkacross the room--at their slim waists, the careless _aplomb_and grace with which the costly stuffs and gleaming jewels wereworn, and the white necks displayed--and sank into a chairtrembling and miserable. That the only person to keep her incountenance should be that particular person--that they two shouldthus fall into a class together, by themselves, cut off from allthe rest--it was too much! Then, by a quick reaction, some of hernatural obstinacy returned upon her. She held herself erect, andlooked steadily round the room. 

'Mr. Edwardes--Mrs. Grieve, ' said Lady Driffield's impassive voice, speaking, as it seemed to Lucy, from a great height, as the tallfigure swept past her to introductions more important. 

A young man bowed to Lucy, looked at her for a moment, then, pulling his fair moustache, turned away to speak to Miss Danby, who, in the absence of more stimulating suitors for her smiles, wasgraciously pleased to bestow a few of them on Lord Driffield's newagent. 

'Whom are we waiting for?' said Miss Danby, looking round her, andslightly glancing at Lucy. 

'Only the Dean, I believe, ' said Mr. Edwardes, with a smile. 'Inever knew Dean Manley less than half an hour late in _this_house. '

A cold shiver ran through Lucy. Then they--she and David--had beenall but the last, had all but kept the whole of this portentousgathering waiting for them. 

In the midst of her new tremor the glass doors were again thrownopen, and in walked the Dean--a short, plain man, with a mirthfuleye, a substantial person, and legs which became his knee-breeches. 

'Thirty-five minutes, Dean!' said the handsome youth, who had beentalking to Lady Venetia, as he held up his watch. 

'It is a remarkable fact, Reggie, ' said the Dean, laying his handon the lad's shoulder, 'that your watch has gained persistently eversince I was first acquainted with you. Ah, well, keep it ahead, myboy. A diplomatist must be egged on somehow. '

'I thought the one condition of success in that trade was thepatience to do nothing, ' said a charming voice. 'Don't interferewith Reggie's prospects, Dean. '

'Has he got any?' said the Dean, maliciously. 'My dear Mrs. Wellesdon, you are a "sight for sair een. "'

And he pressed the new-comer's hand between both his own, surveyingher the while with a fatherly affection and admiration. 

Lucy looked up, a curious envy at her heart. She saw the beautifullady in pink, who had come across the room to greet the Dean. _Was_ she beautiful? Lucy hurriedly asked herself. Perhapsnot, in point of feature, but she held her head so nobly, hercolour was so subtle and lovely, her eye so speaking, and her mouthso sweet, she carried about with her a preeminence so natural andhuman, that beauty was in truth the only word that fitted her. Now, as the Dean passed on from her to some one else, she glanced downat the little figure in terra-cotta satin, and, with a kindlydiffident expression, she sat down and began to talk to Lucy. Marcia Wellesdon was a sorceress, and could win whatever hearts shepleased. In a few moments she so soothed Lucy's nervousness thatshe even beguiled from her some bright and natural talk about thejourney and the house, and Lucy was rapidly beginning to be happy, when the signal for dinner was given, and a general move began. 

At dinner Mr. Edwardes bestowed his conversation for a decent spaceof time--say, during the soup and fish--upon Mrs. Grieve. Lucy, once more ill at ease, tried eagerly to propitiate him by askinginnumerable questions about the family, and the pictures, and theestate, it being at once evident that he had an intimate knowledgeof all three. But as the family, the pictures, and the estate werealways with him, so to speak, made, indeed, a burden which hisshoulders had some difficulty in carrying, the attractions of thisvein of talk palled on the young agent--who was himself a scion ofgood family, with his own social ambitions--before long. He decidedthat Mrs. Grieve was pure middle-class, not at all accustomed todine in halls of pride, and much agitated by her surroundings. Thetype did not interest him. She seemed to be asking him to help herout of the mire, and as one does not go into society to bebenevolent but to be amused, by the time the first _entree_was well in he had edged his chair round, and was in animated talkwith pretty little Lady Alice Findlay, the daughter of thehook-nosed Lord-Lieutenant of the county, who was seated at LadyDriffield's right hand. Lucy noticed the immediate difference intone, the easy variety of topic, compared with her own sense ofdifficulty, and her heart swelled with bitterness. 

Then, to her horror, she saw that, from inattention and ignoranceof what might be expected, she had allowed the servants tofill every single wineglass of the four standing at herright--positively every one. Sherry, claret, hock, champagne--shewas provided with them all. She cast a hurried and guilty eye roundthe table. Save for champagne, each lady's glasses stoodimmaculately empty, and when Lucy came back to her own collectionshe could bear it no longer. 

'Mr. Edwardes!' she said hastily, leaning over towards him. 

The young man turned abruptly. 'Yes, ' he said, looking at her insome surprise. 

'Oh, Mr. Edwardes! can you ask some one to take these wineglassesaway? I didn't want any, and it looks so--so--dreadful!'

The agent thought that Mrs. Grieve was going to cry. As forhimself, his eye twinkled, and he had great difficulty to restraina burst of laughter. He called a footman near, and Lucy was soonrelieved of her fourfold incubus. 

'Oh, but you must save the champagne!' he said, and, bending hischair backward, he was about to recall the man, Lucy stopped him. 

'Don't--don't, _please_, Mr. Edwardes!' she said, in an agony. 

He lifted his eyebrows good-humouredly, and desisted. Then he askedher if he should give her some water, and when that was done theepisode apparently seemed to him closed, for he turned away again, and looked out for fresh opportunities with Lady Alice. Lucy, meanwhile, was left feeling herself even more unsuccessful and moreout of place than before, and ready to sink with vexation. And howwell David was getting on! There he was, between Mrs. Shepton andthe beautiful lady in pink, and he and Mrs. Wellesdon were deep inconversation, his dark head bent gravely towards her, his facemelting every now and then into laughter or crossed by some vividlight of assent and pleasure. Lucy's look travelled over the table, the orchids with which it was covered, the lights, the plate, thento the Vandykes behind the guests, and the great mirrors inbetween--came back to the table, and passed from face to face, tillagain it rested upon David. The conviction of her husband'shandsome looks and natural adequacy to this or any world, withwhich her survey ended, brought with it a strange mixture offeelings--half pleasure, half bitterness. 

'Are you from this part of the world, may I ask?' said a voice ather elbow. 

She turned, and saw Colonel Danby, who was tired of devotinghimself to the wife of a neighbouring Master of Hounds--a lady withwhite hair and white eyelashes, always apparently on the point ofsleep, even at the liveliest dinner-table--and was now inclined tosee what this little provincial might be made of. 

'Oh, yes! we are from Manchester, ' said Lucy, straighteningherself, and preparing to do her best. 'We live in Manchester--atleast, of course, not _in_ Manchester. No one could do that. '

It was but three years since she had ceased to do it, but newhabits of speech grow apace when it is a matter of social prestige. She was terribly afraid lest anybody should now think of them aspersons who lived over their shop. 

'Ah!--suppose not, ' said Colonel Danby, carelessly. 'Land inManchester, they tell me now, is almost as costly as it is inLondon. '

Whereat Lucy went off at score, delighted to make Manchesterimportant and to produce her own information. She had an aptitudefor business gossip, and she chatted eagerly about the price thatSo-and-So had paid for their new warehouses, and the sum whichreport said the Corporation was going to spend on a fine newstreet. 

'And of course many people don't like it. There's always grumblingabout the rates. But they should have public spirit, shouldn'tthey? Are you acquainted with Manchester?' she added, more timidly. 

All this time Colonel Danby had been listening with half an ear, and was much more assiduously trying to make up his mind whetherthe little _bourgeoise_ was pretty at all. She had rather afine pair of eyes--he supposed she had made that dress in her ownback parlour. 

'Manchester? I--oh, I have spent a night at the Queen's Hotel nowand then, ' said the Colonel, with a yawn. 'What do you do there? Doyou amuse yourself--eh?'

His smile was not pleasant. He had a florid face, with bad linesround the eyes and a tyrannous mouth. His physical make had beenmagnificent, but reckless living had brought on the penalties ofgout before their time. 

Lucy was intimidated by the mixture of familiarity and patronage inthe tone. 

'Oh, yes, ' she said, hurriedly; 'we get all the best companies fromthe London theatres, and there are _very_ good concerts. '

'And that kind of thing amuses you?' said the Colonel, stillexamining her with the same cool, fixed glance. 

'I like music very much, ' stammered Lucy, and then fell silent. 

'Do you know all these people here?'

'Oh, dear, no!' she cried, feeling the very question malevolent. 'Idon't know any of them. My husband wishes to lead a very retiredlife, ' she added, bridling a little, by way of undoing the effectof her admissions. 

'And _you_ don't wish it?'

The disagreeable eyes smiled again. 

'Oh! I don't know, ' said Lucy. 

Colonel Danby reflected that whatever his companion might be, shewas not amusing. 

'Have you noticed the gentleman opposite?' he inquired, stiflinganother yawn. 

Lucy timidly looked across. 

'It is--it is the Dean of Bradford, isn't it?'

'Yes; it's a comfort, isn't it, when one can know a man by hisclothes! Do you see what his deanship has had for dinner?'

Lucy ventured another look, and saw that the Dean had in front ofhim a plate of biscuits and a glass of water, and that thecondition of his knives and forks showed him to have hithertosubsisted on this fare alone. 

'Is he so very--so very religious?' she said, wondering. 

'A-saint in gaiters? Well, I don't know. Probably the saint hasdined at one. Do you feel any inclination to be a saint, Mrs. Grieve?'

Lucy could neither meet nor parry the banter of his look. She onlyblushed. 

'I wouldn't attempt it, if I were you, ' he said, laughing. 'Thosepretty brown eyes weren't meant for it. '

Lucy suddenly felt as though she had been struck, so free andcavalier was the tone. Her cheek took a deeper crimson, and shelooked helplessly across at David. 

'Little fool!' thought the Colonel. 'But she has certainly somepoints. '

At that moment Lady Driffield gave the signal, and, with ahalf-ironical bow to his companion, Colonel Danby rose, picked upher handkerchief for her, and drew his chair aside to let her pass. 

Presently Lucy was sitting in a corner of the magnificent greendrawing-room, to which Lady Driffield had carelessly led the way. In her vague humiliation and unhappiness, she craved that some oneshould come and talk to her and be kind to her--even Mrs. Shepton, who had addressed a few pleasant remarks to her on their way fromthe dining-room. But Mrs. Shepton was absorbed by Lady Driffield, who sat down beside her, and took some trouble to talk. 'Then whynot to me?' was Lucy's instinctive thought. For she realised thatshe and Mrs. Shepton were socially not far apart. Yet LadyDriffield had so far addressed about six words to Mrs. DavidGrieve, while she was now bending her aristocratic neck to listento Mrs. Shepton, who was talking entirely at her ease, with her armround the back of a neighbouring chair, and, as it seemed to Lucy, about politics. 

The rest of the ladies, with the exception of the Master of Hounds'wife, who sat in a chair by the fire and dozed, were all either oldfriends or relations, and they gathered in a group on the Aubussonrug in front of the fire, chatting merrily about their commonkindred, the visits they had paid, or were to pay, the fate oftheir fathers and brothers in the recent election, 'the Duke's'terrible embarrassments, or 'Sir Alfred's' yachting party toNorway, of which little Lady Alice gave a sparkling account. 

In her chair on the outskirts of the talkers, Lucy sat painfullyturning over the leaves of a costly collection of autographs, whichlay on the table near her. Sometimes she tried to interest herselfin the splendid room, with its hangings of pale flowered silk, itsglass cases, full of historical relics, miniatures, and preciousthings, representing the long and brilliant past of the house ofDriffield, the Sir Joshuas and Romneys, which repeated on the wallsthe grace and physical perfection of some of the living womenbelow. But she had too few associations with anything she saw tocare for it, and, indeed, her mind was too wholly given to her ownvague, but overmastering sense of isolation and defeat. If it wereonly bedtime!

Mrs. Wellesdon glanced at the solitary figure from time to time, but Lady Alice had her arm round 'Marcia's' waist, and kept closehold of her favourite cousin. At last, however, Mrs. Wellesdon drewthe young girl with her to the side of Lucy's chair, and, sittingdown by the stranger, they both tried to entertain her, and to showher some of the things in the room. 

Lucy brightened up at once, and thought them both the mostbeautiful and fascinating of human beings. But her good fortune wassoon over, alas! for the gentlemen came in, and the social elementswere once more redistributed. 'Reggie', the young diplomatist, freshly returned from Berlin, laid hold of his sister Marcia, andhis cousin Lady Alice, and carried them off for a family gossipinto a corner of the room, whence peals of young laughter were soonto be heard from him and Lady Alice. 

Mr. Edwardes and Colonel Danby passed Mrs. Grieve by, in quest ofmetal more attractive; Lord Driffield, the Dean, Canon Aylwin, andDavid stood absorbed in conversation; while Lady Driffieldtransferred her attentions to Mr. Shepton, and the husband of thelady by the fire walked up to her, insisting, somewhat crossly, onwaking her. Lucy was once more left alone. 

'Lavinia, haven't we done our duty to this apartment?' cried LordDriffield, impatiently; 'it always puts me on stilts. The library isten times more comfortable. I propose an adjournment. '

Lady Driffield shrugged her shoulders, and assented. So the wholeparty, Lucy timidly attaching herself to Mrs. Shepton, moved slowlythrough a long suite of beautiful rooms, till they reached thegreat cedar-fitted library, which was Lord Driffield's paradise. Here was every book to be desired of the scholar to make him wise, and every chair to make him comfortable. Lord Driffield went to oneof the bookcases, and took a vellum-bound book, found a passage init, and showed it to David Grieve. Canon Aylwin and the Deanpressed in to look, and they all fell back into the recess of agreat oriel, talking earnestly. 

The others passed on into a conservatory beyond the library, wherewas a billard-table, and many nooks for conversation amid thecunning labyrinths of flowers. 

Lucy sank into a cane chair, close to a towering mass of arumlilies, and looked back into the library. Nobody in theconservatory had any thought for her. They were absorbed in eachother, and a merry game of pyramids had been already organised. SoLucy watched her husband wistfully. 

What a beautiful face was that of Canon Aylwin, with whom he wastalking! She could not take her eyes from its long, thin outlines, the apostolic white hair, the eager eyes and quivering mouth, contrasting with the patient courtesy of manner. Yet in her presentsoreness and heat, the saintly charm of the old man's figure didsomehow but depress her the more. 

A little after ten it became evident that _nothing_ could keepthe lady with the white eyelashes out of bed any longer, so thebilliard-room party broke up, and, with a few gentlemen inattendance, the ladies streamed into the hall, and possessedthemselves of bedroom candlesticks. The great house seemed to bealive with talk and laughter as they strolled upstairs, the girlsmaking dressing-gown appointments in each other's rooms for aquarter of an hour later. 

When Lucy reached her own door she stopped awkwardly. LadyDriffield walked on, talking to Marcia Wellesdon. But Marcia lookedback:

'Good night, Mrs. Grieve. '

She returned, and pressed Lucy's hand kindly. 'I am afraid you mustbe tired, ' she said; 'you look so. '

Lady Driffield also shook hands, but, with constitutional_gaucherie_, she did not second Mrs. Wellesdon's remark; shestood by silent and stiff. 

'Oh, no, thank you, ' said Lucy, hurriedly, 'I am quite well. '

When she had disappeared, the other two walked on. 

'What a stupid little thing!' said Lady Driffield. 'The husband maybe interesting--Driffield says he is--but I defy anybody to getanything out of the wife. '

It occurred to Marcia that nobody had been very anxious to make theattempt. But she only said aloud:

'I'm sure she is very shy. What a pity she wears that kind ofdress! She might be quite pretty in something else. '

Meanwhile Lucy, after shutting the outer door of their little suitebehind her, was overtaken as she opened that leading to her ownroom by a sudden gust of wind coming from a back staircase emergingon to their private passage, which she had not noticed before. Thecandle was blown out, and she entered the room in completedarkness. She groped for the matches, and found the little stand;but there were none there. She must have used the last in themaking of her great illumination before dinner. After muchhesitation, she at last summoned up courage to ring the bell, groping her way to it by the help of the light in the passage. 

For a long time no one came. Lucy, standing near her own door, seemed to hear two sounds--the angry beating of her own heart, anda murmur of far-off talk and jollity, conveyed to her up themysterious staircase, which apparently led to some of the servants'quarters. 

Fully five minutes passed; then steps were heard approaching, and ahousemaid appeared. Lucy timidly asked for fresh matches. The girlsaid 'Yes, ma'am, ' in an off-hand way, looked at Lucy with asomewhat hostile eye, and vanished. 

The minutes passed, but no matches were forthcoming. The whirlpoolof the lower regions, where the fun was growing uproarious, seemedto have engulfed the messenger. At last Lucy was fain to undress bythe help of a glimmer of light from her door left ajar, and aftermany stumbles and fumblings at last crept, tired and wounded, intobed. This finale seemed to her of a piece with all the rest. 

As she lay there in the dark, incident after incident of herluckless evening coming back upon her, her heart grew hungry forDavid. Nay, her craving for him mounted to jealousy and passion. After all, though he did get on so much better in grand houses thanshe did, though they were all kind to him and despised her, he was_hers_, her very own, and no one should take him from her. Beautiful Mrs. Wellesdon might talk to him and make friends withhim, but he did not belong to any of them, but to _her_, Lucy. She pined for the sound of his step--thought of throwing herselfinto his arms, and seeking consolation there for the pains of anhabitual self-importance crushed beyond bearing. 

But when that step was actually heard outside, her mind veeredin an instant. She had made him come; he would think she haddisgraced him; he had probably noticed nothing, for a certainabsent-mindedness in society had grown upon him of late years. No, she would hold her peace. 

So when David, stepping softly and shading his candle, came in, andcalled 'Lucy' under his breath to see whether she might be awake, Lucy pretended to be sound asleep. He waited a minute, and thenwent out to change his coat and go down to the smoking-room. 

Poor little Lucy! As she lay there in the dark, the tearsdropping slowly on her embroidered pillow, the issue of all hermortification was a new and troubled consciousness about herhusband. Why this difference between them? How was it that hecommanded from all who knew him either a warm sympathy or aninvoluntary respect, while she--

She had gathered from some scraps of the talk round him which hadreached her that it was just those sides of his life--thosequixotic ideal sides--which were an offence and annoyance to herthat touched other people's imagination, opened their hearts. Andshe had worried and teased him all these years! Not since thebeginning. For, looking back, she could well remember the days whenit was still an intoxication that he should have married her, whenshe was at once in awe of him and foolishly, proudly, happy. Butthere had come a year when David's profits from his business hadamounted to over 2, 000 pounds, and when, thanks to a large loanpressed upon him by his Unitarian landlord, Mr. Doyle, he had takenthe new premises in Prince's Street. And from that moment Lucy'shorizon had changed, her ambitions had hardened and narrowed; shehad begun to be impatient with her husband, first, that he couldnot make her rich faster, then, after their Tantalus gleam ofwealth, that he would put mysterious and provoking obstacles inthe way of their getting rich at all. 

She meant to keep awake--to wait for him. But she began to think ofSandy. _He_ would be glad to see his 'mummy' again! In fancyshe pressed his cheek against her own burning one. He and Davidwere still alive--still hers--it was all right somehow. Consolationbegan to steal upon her, and in ten minutes she was asleep. 

CHAPTER IV

When David came in later, he took advantage of Lucy's sleep to situp awhile in his own room. He was excited, and any strongimpression, in the practical loneliness of his deepest life, alwaysnow produced the impulse to write. 

'_Midnight_. --Lucy is asleep. I hope she has been happy andthey have been kind to her. I saw Mrs. Wellesdon talking to herafter dinner. She must have liked that. But _at_ dinner sheseemed to be sitting silent a good deal. 

'What a strange spectacle is this country-house life to anyonebringing to it a fresh and unaccustomed eye! "After all, " said Mrs. Wellesdon, "you must admit that the best of anything is worthkeeping. And in these country-houses, with all their drawbacks, youdo from time to time get the best of social intercourse, a phase ofsocial life as gay, complex, and highly finished as it can possiblybe made. "

'Certainly this applies to me to-night. When have I enjoyed anysocial pleasure so much as my talk with her at dinner? When have Ibeen conscious of such stimulus, such exhilaration, as theevening's discussion produced in me? In the one case, Mrs. Wellesdon taught me what general conversation might be how nimble, delicate, and pleasure-giving; in the other, there was the joy ofthe intellectual wrestle, mingled with a glad respect for one'sopponents. Perhaps nowhere, except on some such ground and insome such circumstances as these, could a debate so earnesthave taken quite so wholesome a tone, so wide a range. We wereequals--debaters, not controversialists--friends, not rivals--inthe quest for truth. 

'Yet what drawbacks! This army of servants--which might be an armyof slaves without a single manly right, so mute, impassive, andhighly trained it is--the breeding of a tyrannous temper in themen, of a certain contempt for facts and actuality even in the bestof the women. Mrs. Wellesdon poured out her social aspirations tome. How naive and fanciful they were! They do her credit, but theywill hardly do anyone else much good. And it is evident that theymark her out in her own circle, that they have brought her easilyadmiration and respect, so that she has never been led to testthem, as any one, with the same social interest, living closer tothe average realities and griefs of life, must have been led totest them. 

'The culture, too, of these aristocratic women, when theyare cultured, is so curious. Quite unconsciously and innocentlyit takes itself for much more than it is, merely by contrast withthe _milieu_--the _milieu_ of material luxury and complication--inwhich it moves. 

'But I am ungrateful. What a social power in the best sense such awoman might become--a woman so sensitively endowed, so noblyplanned!'

David dropped his pen awhile. In the silence of the great house, asilence broken only by the breathings of a rainy autumn windthrough the trees outside, his thought took that picture-makingintensity which was its peculiar gift. Images of what had beenin his own life, and what might have been--the dream of passionwhich had so deeply marked and modified his manhood--Elise, seenin the clearer light of his richer experience--his marriedyears--the place of the woman in the common life--on these his mindbrooded, one by one, till gradually the solemn consciousness ofopportunities for ever missed, of failure, of limitation, evokedanother, as solemn, but sweeter and more touching, of human livesirrevocably dependent on his, of the pathetic unalterable claim ofmarriage, the poverty and hopelessness of all self-seeking, theessential wealth, rich and making rich, of all self-spending. As hethought of his wife and son a deep tenderness flooded the man'swhole nature. With a long sigh, it was as though he took them bothin his arms, adjusting his strength patiently and gladly to thefamiliar weight. 

Then, by a natural reaction, feeling, to escape itself, passed intospeculative reminiscence and meditation of a wholly different kind. 

'Our discussion to-night arose from an attack--if anyone so gentlecan be said to attack--made upon me by Canon Aylwin, on the subjectof those "Tracts on the New Testament"--tracts of mine, of which wehave published three, while I have two or three more half done inmy writing-table drawer. He said, with a certain nervous decision, that he did not wish to discuss the main question, but he wouldlike to ask me, Could anyone be so sure of supposed critical andhistorical fact as to be clear that he was right in proclaiming it, when the proclamation of it meant the inevitable disturbance in hisfellow-men of conceptions whereon their moral life depended? It wascertain that he could destroy; it was most uncertain, even tohimself, whether he could do anything else, with the bestintentions; and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, ought notthe certainty of doing a moral mischief to outweigh, with any justand kindly mind, the much feebler and less solid certainty he mayimagine himself to have attained with regard to certain matters ofhistory and criticism?

'It was the old question of the rights of "heresy, " the function ofthe individual in the long history of thought. We fell into sides:Lord Driffield and I against the Dean and Canon Aylwin. The Deandid not, indeed, contribute much. He sat with his square powerfulhead bent forward, throwing in a shrewd comment here and there, mainly on the logical course of the argument. But when we came tothe main question, as we inevitably did, he withdrew altogether, though he listened. 

'"No, " he said, "no. I am not competent. It has not been my linein life. I have found more than enough to tax my strength in thepractical administration of the goods of Christ. All such questionsI leave, and must leave, to experts, such experts as"--and hementioned the names of some of the leading scholars of theEnglish Church--"or as my friend here", and he laid his handaffectionately on Canon Aylwin's knee. 

'Strange! He leaves to experts such questions as those of theindependence, authenticity, and trustworthiness of the Gospelrecords; of the culture and idiosyncrasies of the first twocenturies as tending to throw light on those records; of theearliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, itmay now fee exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Churchof private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after havingvowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help tothe knowledge of the Scriptures"!

'Yet a better, a more God-fearing, a more sincere, and, withincertain lines, a more acute man than Dean Manley it would certainlybe difficult to find at the present time within the English Church. It is an illustration of the dualism in which so many minds tend tolive, divided between two worlds, two standards, two whollydifferent modes of thought--the one applied to religion even in itsintellectual aspect, the other applied to all the rest ofexistence. Yet--is truth divided?

'To return to Canon Aylwin. I could only meet his reproach, whichhe had a special right to make, for he has taken the kindliestinterest in some of the earlier series of our "Workmen's Tracts, "by going back to some extent to first principles. I endeavoured toargue the matter on ground more or less common to us both. If bothknowledge and morality have only become possible for man by theperpetual action of a Divine spirit on his since the dawn ofconscious life; if this action has taken effect in human history, as, broadly speaking, the Canon would admit, through a free andconstant struggle of opposites, whether in the realm of interest orthe realm of opinion; and if this struggle, perpetually reconciled, perpetually renewed, is the divinely ordered condition, nay, if youwill, the sacred task of human life, --how can the Christian, whoclings, above all men, to the victory of the Divine in the human, who, moreover, in the course of his history has affronted andresisted all possible "authorities" but that of conscience--howcan he lawfully resent the fullest and largest freedom of speech, employed disinterestedly and in good faith, on the part of hisbrother man? The truth must win; and it is only through the freelife of the spirit that she has hitherto prevailed. So much, atleast, the English Churchman must hold. 

It comes to this: must there be no movement of thought because theindividual who lives by custom and convention may at leasttemporarily suffer? Yet the risks of the individual throughoutnature--so far we were agreed--are the correlative of his freedomand responsibility. 

'"Ah, well, " said the dear old man at last, with a change ofexpression which went to my heart, so wistful and spiritual it was, "perhaps I have been faithless; perhaps the Christian ministerwould do better to trust the Lord with His own. But before we leavethe subject, let me say, once for all, that I have read all yourtracts, and weighed most carefully all that they contain. Thematter of them bears on what for me has been the study of manyyears, and all I can say is that I regard your methods of reasoningas unsound, and your conclusions as wholly false. I have been aliterary man from my youth as well as a theologian, and Icompletely dissent from your literary judgments. I believe that ifyou had not been already possessed by a hostile philosophy--whichwill allow no space for miracle and revelation--you would not havearrived at them. I am old and you are young. Let me bear mytestimony while there is time. I have taken a great interest in youand your work. "

'He spoke with the most exquisite courtesy and simplicity, his lookwas dignified and heavenly. I felt like kneeling to ask hisblessing, even though he could only give it in the shape of aprayer for my enlightenment. 

'But now, alone with conscience, alone with God, how does thematter stand? The challenge of such a life and conviction as CanonAylwin's is a searching one. It bids one look deep into one's self, it calls one to truth and soberness. What I seem to see is that heand I both approach Christianity with a prepossession, with, as hesays, "a philosophy. " His is a prepossession in favour of a systemof interference from without, by Divine or maleficent powers, fortheir own ends, with the ordinary sequences of nature--which oncecovered, one may say, the whole field of human thought and shapedthe whole horizon of humanity. From the beginning of history thisprepossession--which may be regarded in all its phases as anexpression of man's natural impatience to form a working hypothesisof things--has struggled with the "impulse to know. " And slowly, irrevocably, from age to age--the impulse to know has beaten backthe impulse to imagine, has confined the prepossession of faithwithin narrower and narrower limits, till at last it is evenpreparing to deny it the guidance of religion, which it has so longclaimed. For the impulse of science, justified by the long wrestleof centuries, is becoming itself religious, --and there is a new awerising on the brow of Knowledge. 

'_My_ prepossession--but let the personal pronoun be merelyunderstood as attaching me to that band of thinkers, "of allcountries, nations, and languages, " whose pupil and creature Iam--is simply that of science, of the organised knowledge of therace. It is drawn from the whole of experience, it governs withoutdispute every department of thought, and without it, in fact, neither Canon Aylwin nor I could think at all. 

'Moreover, I humbly believe that I desire the same spiritual goodsas he: holiness, the knowledge of God, the hope of immortality. Butwhile for him these things are bound up with the maintenance of theolder prepossession, for me there is no such connection at all. 

'And again, I seem to see that when this intellect of his, so keen, so richly stored, approaches the special ground of Christianthought, it changes in quality. It becomes wholly subordinate tothe affections, to the influences of education and habitualsurroundings. Talk to him of Dante, of the influence of thebarbarian invasions on the culture and development of Europe, ofthe Oxford movement, you will find in him an historical sense, adelicate accuracy of perception, a luminous variety of statement, which carry you with him into the very heart of the truth. Butdiscuss with him the critical habits and capacity of those earliestChristian writers, on whose testimony so much of the Christiancanon depends--ask him to separate the strata of material in theNew Testament, according to their relative historical and ethicalvalue, under the laws which he would himself apply to any otherliterature in the world--invite him to exclude this as legendaryand that as accretion, to distinguish between the original kerneland that which the fancy or the theology of the earliest hearersinevitably added--and you will feel that a complete change has comeover the mind. However subtle and precise his arguments mayoutwardly look, they are at bottom the arguments of affection, ofthe special pleader. He has fenced off the first century from therest of knowledge; has invented for all its products alike special_criteria_ and a special perspective. He cannot handle the NewTestament in the spirit of science, for he approaches it on hisknees. The imaginative habit of a lifetime has decided for him; andyou ask of him what is impossible. 

'"An end must come to scepticism somewhere!" he once said in thecourse of our talk. "Faith must take her leap--you know as well asI!--if there is to be faith at all. "

'Yes, but _where_--at what point? Is the clergyman who talkswith sincere distress about infidel views of Scripture and preachesagainst them, while at the same time he could not possibly give anintelligible account of the problem of the Synoptic Gospels as itnow presents itself to the best knowledge, or an outline of thecase pressed by science for more than half a century withincreasing force and success against the historical character ofSt. John's Gospel--is he justified in making his ignorance theleaping-point?

'Yet the upshot of all our talk is that I am restless andoppressed. 

'... I sit and think of these nine years since Berkeley and sorrowfirst laid hold of me. Berkeley rooted in me the conception of mindas the independent antecedent of all experience, and none of thescientific materialism, which so troubles Anerum that he willultimately take refuge from it in Catholicism, affects me. But theethical inadequacy of Berkeley became very soon plain to me. Iremember I was going one day through one of the worst slums ofAncoats, when a passage in his examination of the origin of eviloccurred to me:

'"But we should further consider that the very blemishes anddefects of nature are not without their use, in that _they makean agreeable sort of variety_, and augment the beauty of therest of creation, as shades in a picture serve to set off thebrighter and more enlightened parts. "

'I had just done my best to save a little timit scarecrow of achild, aged about six, from the blows of its brutal father, who hadalready given it a black eye--my heart blazed within me, --and fromthat moment Berkeley had no spell for me. 

'Then came that moment when, after my marriage, haunted as I was bythe perpetual oppression of Manchester's pain and poverty, theChristian mythology, the Christian theory with all its varied andbeautiful flowerings in human life, had for a time an attractionfor me so strong that Dora naturally hoped everything, and I feltmyself becoming day by day more of an orthodox Christian. Whatchecked the tendency I can hardly now remember in detail. It was aconverging influence of books and life--no doubt largely helped, with regard to the details of Christian belief, by the pressure ofthe German historical movement, as I became more and more fullyacquainted with it. 

'At any rate, St. Damian's gradually came to mean nothing to me, though I kept, and keep still, a close working friendship with mostof the people there. But I am thankful for that Christian phase. Itenabled me to realise as nothing else could the strength of theChristian case. 

'And since then it has been a long and weary journey through manypaths of knowledge and philosophy, till of late years the newEnglish phase of Kantian and Hegelian thought, which has beenspreading in our universities, and which is the outlet of men whocan neither hand themselves over to authority, like Newman, nor toa mere patient nescience in the sphere of metaphysics, like HerbertSpencer, has come to me with an ever-increasing power of healingand edification. 

'That the spiritual principle in nature and man exists and governs;that mind cannot be explained out of anything but itself; that thehuman consciousness derives from a universal consciousness, and isthereby capable both of knowledge and of goodness; that thephenomena and history of conscience are the highest revelation ofGod; that we are called to co-operation in a divine work, and inspite of pain and sin may find ground for an infinite trust, covering the riddle of the individual lot, in the history andcharacter of that work in man, so far as it has gone--these thingsare deeper and deeper realities to me. They govern my life; theygive me peace; they breathe me hope. 

'But the last glow, the certainties, the _vision_, of faith!Ah! me, I believe that He is there, yet my heart gropes indarkness. All that is personality, holiness, compassion in us, mustbe in Him intensified beyond all thought. Yet I have no familiarityof prayer. I cannot use the religious language which should be minewithout a sense of unreality. My heart is athirst. 

'And can religion possibly _depend_ upon a long process ofthought? How few can think their way to Him--perhaps none, indeed, by the logical intellect alone. He reveals himself to the simple. _Speak to me, to me also, O my Father!_'

Sunday morning broke fresh and golden after a wet night. Lucy laystill in the early dawn, thinking of the day that had to be faced, feeling more cheerful, however, with the refreshment of sleep, andinclined to hope that she might have got over the worst, and thatbetter things might be in store for her. 

So that when David said to her, 'You poor little person, did theyeat you up last night--Lady Driffield and her set?' she onlyanswered evasively that Mrs. Wellesdon had been nice, but that LadyDriffield had very bad manners, and she was sure everybody thoughtso. 

To which David heartily assented. Then Lucy put her question:

'Did you think, when you looked at me last night at dinner, thatI--that I looked nice?' she said, flushing, yet driven on by aninward smart. 

'Of course I did!' David declared. 'Perhaps you should hold yourselfup a little more. The women here are so astonishingly straight andtall, like young poplars. '

'Mrs. Wellesdon especially, ' Lucy reflected, with a pang. 

'But you thought I--had done my hair nicely?' she said desperately. 

'Very! And it was the prettiest hair there!' he said, smoothingback the golden brown curls from her temple. 

His compliment so delighted her that she dressed and prepared todescend to breakfast with a light heart. She was not often now sohappily susceptible to a word of praise from him; she was moreexacting than she had once been, but since her acquaintance withLady Driffield she had been brought low!

And her evil fortune returned upon her, alas, at breakfast, andthroughout the day. Breakfast, indeed, seemed to her a moreformidable meal than any. For people straggled in, and the ultimatearrangement of the table seemed entirely to depend upon thepersonal attractiveness of individuals, upon whether they annexedor repelled new-comers. Lucy found herself at one time alone andshivering in the close neighbourhood of Lady Driffield, who wasintrenched behind the tea-urn, and after giving her guest a finger, had, Lucy believed, spoken once to her, expressing a desire forscones. The meal itself, with its elaborate cakes and meats andfruits, intimidated Lucy even more than the dinner had done. Thebreach between it and any small housekeeping was more complete. Shefelt that she was eating like a school-girl; she devoured her toastdry, out of sheer inability to ask for butter; and, sitting for themost part isolated in the unpopular--that is to say, the LadyDriffield--quarter of the table, went generally half-starved. 

As for David, he, with Lord Driffield, Mrs. Wellesdon, Lady Alice, Reggie, and Mrs. Shepton for company at the other end, had on thewhole an excellent time. There was, however, one uncomfortablemoment of friction between him and Colonel Danby, who had strolledin last of all, with the vicious look of a man who has not had thegood night to which he considered himself entitled, and mustsomehow wreak it on the world. 

Just before he entered, Lady Driffield, looking round to see thatthe servants had departed, had languidly started the question:'Does one talk to one's maid? Do you, Marcia, talk to your maid?How can anyone ever find anything to say to one's maid?'

The topic proved unexpectedly interesting. Both Marcia Wellesdonand Lady Alice declared that their maids were their bosom friends. Lady Driffield shrugged her shoulders, then looked at Mrs. Grieve, who had sat silent, opened her mouth to speak, recollected herself, and said nothing. At that moment Colonel Danby entered. 

'I say, Danby!' called the young attache, Marcia's brother, 'do youtalk to your valet?'

'Talk to my valet!' said the Colonel, putting up his eye-glass tolook at the dishes on the side table--he spoke with suavity, butthere was an ominous pucker in the brow--'what should I do thatfor? I don't pay the fellow for his conversation, I presume, but tobutton my boots, and precious badly he does it too. I don't evenknow what his elegant surname is. "Thomas, " or "James, " or "William"is enough peg for me to hang my orders on. I generally christenthem fresh when they come to me. '

Little Lady Alice looked indignant. Lucy caught her husband's face, and saw it suddenly pale, as it easily did under a quick emotion. He was thinking of the valet he had seen at the station standing bythe Danbys' luggage--a dark, anxious-looking man, whose likeness toone of the compositors in his own office--a young fellow for whomhe had a particular friendship--had attracted his notice. 

'Why do you suppose he puts up with you--your servant?' he said, bending across to Colonel Danby. He smiled a little, but his eyesbetrayed him. 

'Puts up with me!' Colonel Danby lifted his brows, regarding Davidwith an indescribable air of insolent surprise. 'Because I make itworth his while in pounds, shillings, and pence; that's all. '

And he put down his pheasant _salmi_ with a clatter, while hiswife handed him bread and other propitiations. 

'Probably because he has a mother or sister, ' said David, slowly. 'We trust a good deal to the patience of our "masters. "'

The Colonel stopped his wife's attentions with an angry hand. Butjust as he was about to launch a reply more congruous with his goutand his contempt for 'Driffield's low-life friends' than with theamenities of ordinary society, and while Lady Venetia was slowlyand severely studying David through her eyeglass, Lord Driffieldthrew himself into the breach with a nervous story of somefavourite 'man' of his own, and the storm blew over. 

Lady Driffield, indeed, who herself disliked Colonel Danby, as oneoverbearing person dislikes another, and only invited him becauseLady Venetia was her cousin and an old friend, was rather pleasedwith David's outbreak. After breakfast she graciously asked him ifshe should show him the picture gallery. 

But David was still seething with wrath, and looked at Vandeveldesand De Hoochs and Rembrandts with a distracted eye. Once, indeed, in a little alcove of the gallery hung with English portraits, hewoke to a start of interest. 

'Imagine that that should be Gray!' he said, pointing to apicture--well known to him through engraving--of a little man in abob wig, with a turned-up nose and a button chin, and a general airof eager servility. '_Gray_, --one of our greatest poets!' Hestood wondering, feeling it impossible to fit the dignity of Gray'sverse to the insignificance of Gray's outer man. 

'Oh, Gray--a great poet, you think? I don't agree with you. I havealways thought the "Night Thoughts" very dull, ' said LadyDriffield, sweeping along to the next picture, in a sublimeunconsciousness. David smiled--a flash of mirth that cleared hiswhole look--and was himself again. Moreover he was soon takenpossession of by Lord Driffield, and the two disappeared for ahappy morning spent between the library and the woods. 

Meanwhile Lucy went to church, and had the bliss of feeling thatshe made one too many in the omnibus, and that, squeeze herself assmall as she might, she was still crushing Miss Danby's newdress--a fact of which both mother and daughter were clearly aware. Looking back upon it, Lucy could not remember that for her therehad been any conversation going or coming; but it is quite possiblethat her memory of Benet's Park was even more pronounced than inreality. 

David and Lord Driffield came in when lunch was half over, andafterwards there was a general strolling into the garden. 

'Are you all right?' said David to his wife, taking her armaffectionately. 

'Oh yes, thank you, ' she said hurriedly, perceiving that ReggioCalvert was coming up to her. 'I'm all right. Don't take my arm, David. It looks so odd. '

And she turned delightedly to talk to the young diplomatist, whohad the kindliness and charm of his race, and devoted himself toher very prettily for a while, though they had great difficulty infinding topics, and he was coming finally to the end of hisresources when Lady Driffield announced that 'the carriage would beround in half an hour. '

'Goodness gracious! then I must write some letters first, ' he said, with the importance of the budding ambassador, and ran into thehouse. 

The others seemed to melt away--David and Canon Aylwin strollingoff together--and soon Lucy found herself alone. She sat down in aseat round which curved a yew hedge, and whence there was asomewhat wide view over a bare, hilly country, with suggestionseverywhere of factory life in the hollows, till on the southwest itrose and melted into the Derbyshire moors. Autumn--late autumn--wason all the reddening woods and in the cool sunshine; but there wasa bright border of sunflowers and dahlias near, which no frost hadyet touched, and the gaiety both of the flowers and of the clearblue distance forbade as yet any thought of winter. 

Lucy's absent and discontented eye saw neither flowers nordistance; but it was perforce arrested before long by the figure ofMrs. Shepton, who came round the corner of the yew hedge. 

'Have they gone?' said that lady. 

'Who?' said Lucy, startled. 'I heard a carriage drive off just now, I think. '

'Ah! then they _are_ gone. Lady Driffield has carried off allher friends--except Mrs. Wellesdon, who, I believe, is lying downwith a headache--to tea at Sir Wilfrid Herbart's. You see the housethere'--and she pointed to a dim, white patch among woods, aboutfive miles off. 'It is not very civil of a hostess, perhaps, toleave her guests in this way. But Lady Driffield is Lady Driffield. '

Mrs. Shepton laughed, and threw back the flapping green gauze veilwith which she generally shrouded a freckled and serviceablecomplexion, in no particular danger, one would have thought, ofspoiling. 

Lucy instinctively looked round to see how near they were to thehouse, and whether there were any windows open. 

'It must be very difficult, I should think, to be--to be friendswith Lady Driffield. '

She looked up at Mrs. Shepton with the childish air of one bothhungry for gossip and conscious of the naughtiness of it. 

Mrs. Shepton laughed again. She had never seen anyone behave worse, she reflected, than Lady Driffield to this little Manchesterperson, who might be uninteresting, but was quite inoffensive. 

'Friends! I should think so. An armed neutrality is all that payswith Lady Driffield. I have been here many times, and I can nowkeep her in order perfectly. You see, Lady Driffield has a brotherwhom she happens to be fond of--everybody has some soft place--andthis brother is a Liberal member down in our West Riding part ofthe world. And my husband is the editor of a paper that possesses agreat deal of political influence in the brother's constituency. Wehave backed him up through this election. He is not a bad fellow atall, though about as much of a Liberal at heart as this hedge, ' andMrs. Shepton struck it lightly with the parasol she carried. 'Myhusband thinks we got him in--by the skin of his teeth. So LadyDriffield asks us periodically, and behaves herself, more or less. My husband likes Lord Driffield. So do I; and an occasional descentupon country houses amuses me. It especially entertains me to makeLady Driffield talk politics. '

'She must be very Conservative, ' said Lucy, heartily. Conservatismstood in her mind for the selfish exclusiveness of big people. Herfather had always been a bitter Radical. 

'Oh dear no--not at all! Lady Driffield believes herself anadvanced Liberal; that is the comedy of it. _Liberals!_' criedMrs. Shepton, with a sudden bitterness, which transformed thebroad, plain, sleepy face. 'I should like to set her to work for ayear in one of those mills down there. She might have some politicsworth having by the end of it. '

Lucy looked at her in amazement. Why, the mill people were veryhappy--most of them. 

'Ah well!' said Mrs. Shepton, recovering herself, 'what we have todo--we intelligent middle class--for the next generation or two, isto _drive_ these aristocrats. Then it will be seen what is tobe done with them finally. Well, Mrs. Grieve, we must amuseourselves. _Au revoir!_ My husband has some writing to do, andI must go and help him. '

She waved her hand and disappeared, sweeping her green and yellowskirts behind her with an air as though Benet's Park were already aseminary for the correction of the great. 

Lucy sat on pondering till she felt dull and cold, and decided togo in. On finding her way back she passed round a side of the housewhich she had not yet seen. It was the oldest part of the building, and the windows, which were mullioned and narrow, and at someheight from the ground, looked out upon a small bowling-green, closely walled in from the rest of the gardens and the park by athick screen of trees. She lingered along the path looking at a fewlate roses which were still blooming in this sheltered spot againstthe wall of the house, when she was startled by the sound of herown name, and, looking up, she saw that there was an open windowabove her. The temptation was too great. She held her breath andlistened. 

'Lord Driffield says he married her when he was quite young, thataccounts for it. ' Was not the voice Lady Alice's? 'But it is a pitythat she is not more equal to him. I never saw a more strikingface, did you? Yet Lord Driffield says he is not as good-looking ashe promised to be as a boy. I wish we had been there last nightafter dinner, Marcia! They say he gave Colonel Danby such adressing about some workmen's question. Colonel Danby was layingdown the law about strikes in his usual way--he _is_ an odiouscreature!--and wishing that the Government would just send aninfantry regiment into the middle of the Yorkshire miners that areon strike now, when Mr. Grieve fired up. And everybody backed him. Reggie told me it was splendid; he never saw a better shindy. It isa pity about her. Everybody says he might have a great career if hepleased. And she can't be any companion to him. --Now, Marcia, youknow your head _is_ better, so don't say it isn't! Why, I haveused a whole bottle of eau de Cologne on you. '

So chattered pretty, kindly Lady Alice, sitting with her back tothe window beside Marcia Wellesdon. Lucy stood still a moment, could not hear what Mrs. Wellesdon said languidly in answer, thencrept on, her lip quivering. 

From then till long after the dark had fallen she was quite alone. David, coming back from a long walk, and tea at the agent's houseon the further edge of the estate, found his wife lying on her bed, and the stars beginning to look in upon her through the unshutteredwindows. 

'Why, Lucy! aren't you well, dear?' he said, hurrying up to her. 

'Oh yes, very well, thank you' she said, in a constrained voice. 'My head aches rather. '

'Who has been looking after you?' he said, instantly reproachinghimself for the enjoyment of his own afternoon. 

'I have been here since three o'clock. '

'And nobody gave you any tea?' he asked, flushing. 

'No, I went down, but there was nobody in the drawing-room. Isuppose the footman thought nobody was in. '

'Where was Lady Driffield?'

'Oh! she and most of them went out to tea--to a house a good wayoff. '

Lucy's tone was dreariness itself. David sat still, his breathcoming quickly. Then suddenly Lucy turned round and drew him downto her passionately. 

'When can we get home? Is there an early train?'

Then David understood. He took her in his arms, and she broke downand cried, sobbing out a catalogue of griefs that was only halfcoherent. But he saw at once that she had been neglected andslighted, nay more, that she had been somehow wounded to the quick. His clasped hand trembled on his knee. This was hospitality! He hadgauged Lady Driffield well. 

'An early train?' he said, with frowning decision. 'Yes, of course. There is to be an eight o'clock breakfast for those who want to getoff. We shall be home by a little after nine. Cheer up, darling. Iwill look after you to-night--and think of Sandy to-morrow!'

He laid his cheek tenderly against hers, full of a passion ofresentment and pity. As for her, the feeling with which she clungto him was more like the feeling she had first shown him on theWakely moors, than anything she had known since. 

'Sandy! why don't you say good morning, sir?' said David nextmorning, standing on the threshold of his own study, with Lucy justbehind. His face was beaming with the pleasures of home. 

Sandy, who was lying curled up in David's arm-chair, lookedsleepily at his parents. His thumb was tightly wedged in his mouth, and with the other he held pressed against him a hideous rag doll, which had been presented to him in his cradle. 

'Jane's asleep, ' he said, just removing his thumb for the purpose, and then putting it back again. 

'Heartless villain!' said David, taking possession of both him andJane. 'And do you mean to say you aren't glad to see Daddy andMammy?'

'Zes--but Sandy's _so_ fond of childwen, ' said Sandy, cuddlingJane up complacently, and subsiding into his father's arms. 

Husband and wife laughed into each other's eyes. Then Lucy kneltdown to tie the child's shoe, and David, first kissing the boy, bent forward and laid another kiss on the mother's hair. 

CHAPTER V

'An exciting post, ' said David to Lucy one morning as she enteredthe dining-room for breakfast. 'Louie proposes to bring her littlegirl over to see us, and Ancrum will be home to-night!'

'Louie!' repeated Mrs. Grieve, standing still in her amazement. 'What do you mean?'

It was certainly unexpected. David had not heard from Louie formore than six months; his remittances to her, however, were at alltimes so casually acknowledged that he had taken no particularnotice; and he and she had not met for two years and more--sincethat visit to Paris, in fact, recorded in his journal. 

'It is quite true, ' said David; 'it seems to be one of her suddenschemes. I don't see any particular reason for it. She says shemust "put matters before" me, and that Cecile wants a change. Idon't see that a change to Manchester in February is likely to helpthe poor child much. No, it must mean more money. We must make upour minds to that, ' said David with a little sad smile, looking athis wife. 

'David! I don't see that you're called to do it at all!' criedLucy. 'Why, you've done much more for her than anybody else wouldhave done! What they do with the money I can't think--dreadfulpeople!'

She began to pour out the tea with vehemence and an angry lip. Shehad always in her mind that vision of Louie, as she had seen herfor the first and only time in her life, marching up Market Placein the 'loud' hat and the black and scarlet dress, stared at andstaring. Nor had she ever lost her earliest impression of strongdislike which had come upon her immediately afterwards, when Louieand Reuben had mounted to Dora's sitting-room, and she, Lucy, hadangrily told the quick-fingered, bold-eyed girl who claimed to beDavid Grieve's sister not to touch Dora's work. Nay, every yearsince had but intensified it, especially since their income hadceased to expand rapidly, and the drain of the Montjoies' allowancehad been more plainly felt. She might have begun to feel a littleashamed of herself that she was able to give her husband so littlesympathy in his determination to share his gains with hisco-workers. She was quite clear that she was right in resenting thewasting of his money on such worthless people as the Montjoies. Itwas disgusting that they should sponge upon them so--and withhardly a 'thank you' all the time. Oh dear, no!--Louie tookeverything as her right, and had once abused David through fourpages because his cheque had been two days late. 

David received his wife's remarks in a meditative silence. Hedevoted himself a while to Sandy, who was eating porridge at hisright hand, and tended with great regularity to bestow on hispinafore what was meant for his mouth. At last he said, pushing theletter over to Lucy:

'You had better read it, Lucy. She talks of coming next week. '

Lucy read it with mounting wrath. It was the outcome of a fit ofcharacteristic violence. Louie declared that she could stand herlife no longer; that she was coming over to put things beforeDavid; and if he couldn't help her, she and her child would just goout and beg. She understood from an old Manchester acquaintancewhom she had met in the Rue de Rivoli about Christmas-time thatDavid was doing very well with his business. She wished him joy ofit. If he was prosperous, it was more than she was. Nobody everseemed to trouble their heads about her. 

'Well, I never!' said Lucy, positively choked. 'Why, it's not muchmore than a month since you sent her that last cheque. And now Iknow you'll be saying you can't afford yourself a new great-coat. It's disgraceful! They'll suck you dry, those kind of people, ifyou let them. '

She had taken no pains so far to curb her language for the sake ofher husband's feelings. But as she gave vent to the last acidphrase she felt a sudden compunction. For David was lookingstraight before him into vacancy, with a painful intensity in theeyes, and a curious droop and contraction of the mouth. Why did heso often worry himself about Louie? _He_ had done all hecould, anyway. 

She got up and went over to him with his tea. He woke up from hisabsorption and thanked her. 

'Is it right?'

'Just right!' he said, tasting it. 'All the same, Lucy, it would bereally nice of you to be kind to her and poor little Cecile. Itwon't be easy for either of us having Louie here. '

He began to cut up his bread with sudden haste, then, pausingagain, he went on in a low voice. 'But if one leaves a task likethat undone it makes a sore spot, a fester in the mind. '

She went back to the place in silence. 

'What day is it to be?' she said presently. Certainly they bothlooked dejected. 

'The 16th, isn't it? I wonder who the Manchester acquaintance was. He must have given a rose-coloured account. We aren't so rich asall that, are we, wife?'

He glanced at her with a charming half-apprehensive smile, whichmade his face young again. Lucy looked ready to cry. 

'I know you'll get out of buying that coat, ' she said with energy, as though referring to an already familiar topic of discussionbetween them. 

'No, I won't, ' said David cheerfully. 'I'll buy it before Louiecomes, if that will please you. Oh, we shall do, dear! I've had areal good turn at the shop this last month. Things will look betterthis quarter's end, you'll see. '

'Why, I thought you'd been so busy in the printing office, ' shesaid, a good deal cheered, however, by his remark. 

'So we have. But John's a brick, and doesn't care how much he does. And the number of men who take a personal interest in the house, who do their utmost to forward work, and to prevent waste andscamping, is growing fast. When once we get the apprentices' schoolinto full working order, we shall see. '

David gave himself a great stretch; and then, thrusting his handsdeep into his pockets, stood by the fire enjoying it and his dreamstogether. 

'Has it begun?' said Lucy. Her tone was not particularly cordial;but anyone who knew them well would perhaps have reflected that sixmonths before he would have neither made his remark, nor she haveasked her question. 

'Yes--what?' he said with a start. 'Oh, the school! It has beguntentatively. Six of our best men give in rotation two hours a dayto it at the time when work and the machines are slackest. And wehave one or two teachers from outside. Twenty-three boys haveentered. I have begun to pay them a penny a day for attendance. '

His face lit up with merriment as though he anticipated herremonstrance. 

'David, how foolish! If you coax them like that they won't care abit about it. '

'Well, the experiment has been tried by a great French firm, ' hesaid, 'and it did well. It is really a slight addition to wages, andpays the firm in the end. You should see the little fellows hustleup for their money. I pay it them every month. '

'And it all comes out of _your_ pocket--that, of course, Ineedn't ask, ' said Lucy. But her sarcasm was not bitter, and shehad a motherly eye the while to the way in which Sandy was stuffinghimself with his bread and jam. 

'Well, ' he said, laughing and making no attempt to excuse himself, 'but I tell you, madam, you will do better this year. I positivelymust make some money out of the shop for you and myself too. So Ihave been going at it like twenty horses, and we've sent out asplendid catalogue. '

'Oh, I say, David!' said Lucy, dismayed, 'you're not going to takethe shop-money too to spend on the printing?'

'I won't take anything that will leave you denuded, ' he saidaffectionately; 'and whenever I want anything I'll tell you allabout it--if you like. '

He looked at her significantly. She did not answer for a minute, then she said:

'Don't you want me to give those boys a treat some time?'

'Yes, when the weather gets more decent, if it ever does. We mustgive them a day on the moors--take them to Clough End perhaps. Oh, look here!' he exclaimed with a sudden change of tone, 'let us askUncle Reuben to come and spend the day to see Louie!'

'Why, he won't leave _her_, ' said Lucy. 

'Who? Aunt Hannah? Oh yes, he will. It's wonderful what she can donow. I saw her in November, you remember, when I went to seeMargaret. It's a resurrection. Poor Uncle Reuben!'

'What do you mean?' said Lucy, startled. 

'Well, ' said David slowly, with a half tender, half humorous twistof the lip, 'he can't understand it. He prayed so many years, and itmade no difference. Then came a new doctor, and with electricityand rubbing it was all done. Oh yes, Uncle Reuben would like to seeLouie. And I want to show him that boy there!'

He nodded at Sandy, who sat staring open-mouthed and open-eyed athis parents, a large piece of bread and jam slipping slowly downhis throat. 

'David, you're silly, ' said Lucy. But she went to stand by him atthe fire, and slipped her hand inside his arm. 'I suppose she andCecile had better have the front room, ' she went on slowly. 

'Yes, that would be the most cheerful. '

Then they were silent a little, he leaning his head lightly againsthers. 

'Well, I must go, ' he said, rousing himself; 'I shall just catch thetrain. Send a line to Ancrum, there's a dear, to say I will go andsee him to-night. Four months! I am afraid he has been very bad. '

Lucy stood by the fire a little, lost in many contradictoryfeelings. There was in her a strange sense as of some long strainslowly giving way, the quiet melting of some old hardness. Eversince that autumn time when, after their return from Benet's Park, her husband's chivalry and delicacy of feeling had given back toher the self-respect and healed the self-love which had been sorudely hurt, there had been a certain readjustment of Lucy's naturegoing on below the little commonplaces and vanities and affectionsof her life which she herself would never have been able toexplain. It implied the gradual abandonment of certain ambitions, the relinquishment bit by bit of an arid and fruitless effort. 

She would stand and sigh sometimes--long, regretful sighs like achild--for she knew not what. But David would have his way, and itwas no good; and she loved him and Sandy. 

But she owed no love to Louie Montjoie! It was a relief to hernow--an escape from an invading sweetness of which her little heartwas almost afraid--to sit down and plan how she would protect Davidfrom that grasping woman and her unspeakable husband. 

'David, my dear fellow!' said Ancrum's weak voice. He rose withdifficulty from his seat by the fire. The room was the same littlelodging-house sitting-room in Mortimer Road, where David yearsbefore had poured out his boyish account of himself. Neitherchiffonnier, nor pictures, nor antimacassars had changed at all;the bustling landlady was still loud and vigorous. But Ancrumwas a shadow. 

'You are better?' David said, holding his hand in both his. 

'Oh yes, better for a time. Not for long, thank God!'

David looked at him with painful emotion. Several times duringthese eight years had he seen Ancrum emerge from these mysteriouscrises of his, a broken and shattered man, whom only the force of asuperhuman will could drag back to life and work. But he had neveryet seen him so beaten down, so bloodless, so emaciated as this. Lung mischief had declared itself more than a year before thisdate, and had clearly made progress during this last attack ofmelancholia. He thought to himself that his old friend could nothave long to live. 

'Has Williams been to see you?' he asked, naming a doctor whomAncrum had long known and trusted. 

'Oh yes! He can do nothing. He tells me to give in and go to thesouth. But there is a little work left in me still. I wanted myboys. I grew to pine for my boys--up there. '

'Up there' meant that house in Scotland where lived the friendsbound to him by such tragic memories of help asked and rendered ina man's worst extremity, that he could never speak of them when hewas living his ordinary life in Manchester, passionately as heloved them. 

They chatted a little about the boys, some of whom David had beenkeeping an eye on. Five or six of them, indeed, were in hisprinting-office, and learning in the apprentices' school he hadjust started. 

But in the middle of their talk, with a sudden change of look, Ancrum stooped forward and laid his hand on David's. 

'A little more, Davy--I have just to get a _little_ worse--and_she_ will come to me. '

David was not sure that he understood. Ancrum had only spoken ofhis wife once since the night when, led on by sympathy and emotion, he had met David's young confession by the story of his own fate. She was still teaching at Glasgow so far as David knew, where shewas liked and respected. 

'Yes, Davy--when I have come to the end of my tether--when Ican do no more but die--I shall call--and she will come. Ithas so far killed us to be together--more than a few hours in theyear. But when life is all over for me--she will be kind--andI shall be able to forget it all. Oh, the hours I have sat herethinking--thinking--and _gnashing my teeth!_ My boys think mea kind, gentle, harmless creature, Davy. They little know thepassions I have carried within me--passions of hate andbitterness--outcries against God and man. But there has been Onewith me through the storms'--his voice sank--'aye! and I have goneto Him again and again with the old cry--_Master!--Master!--carest Thou not that we perish?_'

His drawn grey face worked and he mastered himself with difficulty. David held his hand firm and close in a silence which carried withit a love and sympathy not to be expressed. 

'Let me just say this to you, Davy, ' Ancrum went on presently, 'before we shut the door on this kind of talk--for when a man hasgot a few things to do and very little strength to do 'em with, hemust not waste himself. You may hear any day that I have beenreceived into the Catholic Church, or you may only hear it when Iam dying. One way or the other, you _will_ hear it. It hasbeen strange to go about all these years among my Unitarian anddissenting friends and to know that this would be the inevitableend of it. I have struggled alone for peace and certainty. I cannotget them for myself. There is an august, an inconceivablepossibility which makes my heart stand still when I think of it, that the Catholic Church may verily have them to give, as she saysshe has. I am weak--I shall submit--I shall throw myself upon herbreast at last. '

'But why not now, ' said David, tenderly, 'if it would give youcomfort?'

Ancrum did not answer at once; he sat rubbing his hands restlesslyover the fire. 

'I don't know--I don't know, ' he said at last. 'I have told you whatthe end will be, Davy. But the will still flutters--flutters--in mypoor breast, like a caged thing. '

Then that beautiful half-wild smile of his lit up the face. 

'Bear with me, you strong man! What have you been doing withyourself? How many more courts have you been pulling down? And howmuch more of poor Madam Lucy's money have you been throwing out ofwindow?'

He took up his old tone, half bantering, half affectionate, andteased David out of the history of the last six months. While hesat listening he reflected once more, as he had so often reflected, upon the difference between the reality of David Grieve's life asit was and his, Ancrum's, former imaginations of what it would be. A rapid rise to wealth and a new social status, removal to London, a great public career, a personality, and an influence conspicuousin the eyes of England--all these things he had once dreamed of asbelonging to the natural order of David's development. What he hadactually witnessed had been the struggle of a hidden life torealise certain ideal aims under conditions of familiar difficultyand limitation, the dying down of that initial brilliance andpassion to succeed, into a wrestle of conscience as sensitive as itwas profound, as tenacious as it was scrupulous. He had watched anunsatisfactory marriage, had realised the silent resolve of thenorth-countryman to stand by his own people, of the man sprung fromthe poor to cling to the poor: he had become familiar with theveins of melancholy by which both character and life were crossed. That glittering prince of circumstance as he had once foreseen him, was still enshrined in memory and fancy; but the real man was knitto the cripple's inmost heart. 

Another observer, perhaps, might have wondered at Ancrum's sense ofdifference and disillusion. For David after all had made a mark. Ashe sat talking to Ancrum of the new buildings behind theprinting-office where he now employed from two to three hundredmen, of the ups and downs of his profit-sharing experiences, ofthis apprentices' school for the sons of members of the 'house, 'imitated from one of the same kind founded by a great Frenchprinting firm, and the object just now of a passionate energy ofwork on David's part--or as he diverged into the history of animportant trade dispute in Manchester, where he had been appointedarbitrator by the unanimous voice of both sides--as he told thesethings, it was not doubtful even for Ancrum that his power andconsideration were spreading in his own town. 

But, substantially, Ancrum was right. Hard labour and natural gifthad secured their harvest; but that vivid personal element insuccess which captivates and excites the bystander seemed, inDavid's case, to have been replaced by something austere, whichpointed attention and sympathy rather to the man's work than tohimself. When he was young there had been intoxication for such aspectator as Ancrum in the magical rapidity and ease with which heseized opportunity and beat down difficulty. Now that he wasmature, he was but one patient toiler the more at the eternalpuzzles of our humanity. 

Ancrum let him talk awhile. He had always felt a certain interestin David's schemes, though they were not of a quality and sort withwhich a mind like his naturally concerned itself. But his interestnow could not hold out so long as once it could. 

'Ah, that will do--that will do, dear fellow!' he said, interrupting and touching David's hand with apologetic affection. 'I seem to feel your pulse beating 150 to the minute, and it tiresme so I can't bear myself. Gossip to me. How is Sandy?'

David laughed, and had as usual a new batch of 'Sandiana' toproduce. Then he talked of Louie's coming and of the invitationwhich had been sent to Reuben Grieve. 

'I shall come and sit in a corner and look at _her_, ' saidAncrum, nodding at Louie's name. 'What sort of a life has she beenleading all these years? Neither you nor I can much imagine. Butwhat beauty it used to be! How will John stand seeing her again?'

David smiled, but did not think it would affect John very greatly. He was absorbed in the business of Grieve & Co. , and no less round, roseate, and trusty than he had always been. 

'Well, good night--good night!' said Ancrum, and seemed to belooking at the clock uneasily. 'Come again, Davy, and I dare say Ishall struggle up to you. '

At that moment the door opened, and, in spite of a hasty shout fromAncrum, which she did not or would not understand, Mrs. Elsley, hislandlady, came into the room, bearing his supper. She put down thetray, seemed to invite David's attention to it by her indignantlook, and flounced out again like one bursting with forbiddenspeech. 

'Ancrum, this is absurd!' cried David, pointing to the tea andmorsel of dry bread which were to provide this shrunken invalidwith his evening meal. 'You _can't_ live on this stuff now, youknow--you want something more tempting and more nourishing. Do berational!'

Ancrum sprang up, hobbled with unusual alacrity across the room, and, laying hold of David, made a feint of ejecting his visitor. 

'You get along and leave me to my wittles!' he said with the smileof a schoolboy; 'I don't spy on you when you're at your meals. '

David crossed his arms. 

'I shall have to send Lucy down every morning to housekeep withMrs. Elsley, ' he said firmly. 

'Now, David, hold your tongue! I couldn't eat anything else if Itried. And there are two boys down with typhoid in Friar'sYard--drat 'em!--and scarcely a rag on 'em: don't you understand?And besides, David, if _she_ comes, I shall want a pound ortwo, you see?'

He did not look at his visitor's face nor let his own be seen. Hesimply pushed David through the door and shut it. 

'Sandy, they're just come!' cried Lucy in some excitement, huggingthe child to her by way of a last pleasant experience before theadvent of her sister-in-law. Then she put the child down on thesofa and went out to meet the new-comers. 

Sandy sucked a meditative thumb, putting his face to the window, and surveyed the arrival which was going on in the front garden. There was a great deal of noise and talking; the lady in the greycloak was scolding the cabman, and 'Daddy' was taking her bags andparcels from her, and trying to make her come in. On the stepsstood a little girl looking frightened and tired. Sandy twisted hishead round and studied her carefully. But he showed no signs ofrunning out to meet her. She might be nice, or she might be nasty. Sandy had a cautious philosophical way with him towards novelties. He remained perfectly still with his cheek pressed against theglass. 

The door opened. In came Louie, with Lucy looking already flushedand angry behind her, and David, last of all, holding Cecile by thehand. 

Louie was in the midst of denunciations of the cabman, who had, according to her, absorbed into his system, or handed over to anaccomplice on the way, a bandbox which had _certainly_ beenput in at St. Pancras, and which contained Cecile's best hat. Shewas red and furious, and David felt himself as much attacked as thecabman, for to the best of his ability he had transferred them andtheir packages, at the Midland station, from the train to the cab. 

In the midst of her tirade, however, she suddenly stopped short andlooked round the room she had just entered--Lucy's low comfortablesitting-room, with David's books overflowing into every nook andcorner, the tea-table spread, and the big fire which Lucy had beennervously feeding during her time of waiting for the travellers. 

'Well, you've got a fire, anyway, ' she said, brusquely. 'I thoughtyou'd have a bigger house than this by now. '

'Oh, thank you, it's quite big enough!' cried Lucy, going to thetea-table and holding herself very straight. '_Quite_ bigenough for anything _we_ want! Will you take your tea?'

Louie threw herself into an armchair and looked about her. 

'Where's the little boy?' she inquired. 

'I'm here, ' said a small solemn voice from behind the sofa, 'but I'mnot _your_ boy. '

And Sandy, discovered with his back to the window, replaced thethumb which he had removed to make the remark, and went on staringwith portentous gravity at the new-comers. Cecile had nervouslydisengaged herself from David and was standing by her mother. 

'Why, he's small for his age!' exclaimed Louie; 'I'm sure he's smallfor his age. Why, he's nearly five!'

'Come here, Sandy, ' said David, 'and let your aunt and cousin lookat you. '

Sandy reluctantly sidled across the room so as to keep as far aspossible from his aunt and cousin, and fastened on his father'shand. He and the little girl looked at one another. 

'Go and kiss her, ' said David. 

Sandy most unwillingly allowed himself to be put forward. Cecilewith a little patronising woman-of-the-world air stooped and kissedhim first on one cheek and then on the other. Louie only looked athim. Her black eyes--no less marvellous than of yore, although nowthe brilliancy of them owed something to art as well as nature, asLucy at once perceived--stared him up and down, taking stockminutely. 

'He's well made, ' she said grudgingly, 'and his colour isn't bad. Cecile, take your hat off. '

The child obeyed, and the mother with hasty fingers pulled her hairforward here, and put it back there. 'Look at the thickness of it, 'she said, proudly pointing it out to David. 'They'd have given metwo guineas for it in the Rue de la Paix the other day. Why didn'tthat child have your hair, I wonder?' she added, nodding towardsSandy. 

'Because he preferred his mother's, I suppose, ' said David, smilingat Lucy, and wondering through his discomfort what Sandy couldpossibly be doing with his coat-tail. He seemed to be elaboratelyscrubbing his face with it. 

'What are you doing with my coat, villain?' he said, lifting hisson in his arms. 

Sandy found his father's ear, and with infinite precautionwhispered vindictively into it:

'I've wiped _them_ kisses off anyhow. '

David suppressed him, and devoted himself to the travellers andtheir tea. 

Every now and then he took a quiet look at his sister. Louie was insome ways more beautiful than ever. She carried herselfmagnificently, and as she sat at the tea-table--restlessalways--she fell unconsciously into one fine attitude afteranother, no doubt because of her long practice as a sculptor'smodel. All the girl's awkwardness had disappeared; she had theinsolent ease which goes with tried and conscious power. But withthe angularity and thinness of first youth had gone also that wildand startling radiance which Montjoie had caught and fixed in theMaenad statue--the one enduring work of a ruined talent, now to befound in the Luxembourg by anyone who cares to look for it. Herbeauty was less original; it had taken throughout the second-rateParisian stamp; she had the townswoman's pallor, as compared withthe moorland red and white of her youth; and round the eyes andmouth in a full daylight were already to be seen the lines whichgrave the history of passionate and selfish living. 

But if her beauty was less original, it was infinitely morefinished. Lucy beside her stumbled among the cups, and grew moreand more self-conscious; she had felt much the same at Benet's Parkbeside Lady Venetia Danby; only here there was a strong personalanimosity and disapproval fighting with the disagreeable sense ofbeing outshone. 

She left almost all the talk to her husband, and employed herselfin looking after Cecile. David, who had left his work withdifficulty to meet his sister, did his best to keep her going onindifferent subjects, wondering the while what it was that she hadcome all this way to say to him, and perfectly aware that her sharpeyes were in every place, taking a depreciatory inventory of hisproperty, his household, and his circumstances. 

Suddenly Louie said something to Cecile in violent French. It wasto the effect that she was to hold herself up and not stoop like anidiot. 

The child, who was shyly eating her tea, flushed all over, and drewherself up with painful alacrity. Louie went on with a loud accountof the civility shown her by some gentlemen on the Paris boat andon the journey from Dover. In the middle of it she stopped short, her eye flamed, she bent forward with the rapidity of a cat thatsprings, and slapped Cecile smartly on the right cheek. 

'I was watching you!' she cried. 'Are you never going to obey me--doyou think I am going to drag a hunchback about with me?'

Both David and Lucy started forward. Cecile dropped her bread andbutter and began to cry in a loud, shrill voice, hitting outmeanwhile at her mother with her tiny hands in a frenzy of rage andfear. Sandy, frightened out of his wits, set up a loud howl also, till his mother caught him up and carried him away. 

'Louie, the child is tired out!' said David, trying to quiet Cecileand dry her tears. 'What was that for?'

Louie's chest heaved. 

'Because she won't do what I tell her, ' she said fiercely. 'What amI to do with her when she grows up? Who'll ever look at her twice?'

She scowled at the child who had taken refuge on David's knee, thenwith a sudden change of expression she held out her arms, and saidimperiously:

'Give her to me. '

David relinquished her, and the mother took the little tremblingcreature on her knee. 

'Be quiet then, ' she said to her roughly, always in French, 'Ididn't hurt you. There! _Veux-tu du gateau_?'

She cut some with eager fingers and held it to Cecile's lips. Thechild turned away, silently refusing it, the tears rolling down hercheeks. The mother devoured her with eyes of remorse and adoration, while her face was still red with anger. 

'_Dis-moi_, you don't feel anything?' she said, kissing herhungrily. 'Are you tired? Shall I carry you upstairs and put you onthe bed to rest?'

And she did carry her up, not allowing David to touch her. Whenthey were at last safe in their own room, David came down to hisstudy and threw himself into his chair in the dark with a groan. 

CHAPTER VI

Louie and her child entered the sitting-room together when the bellrang for supper-tea. Louie had put on a high red silk dress of abrilliant, almost scarlet, tone, which showed her arms from theelbows and was very slightly clouded here and there with black;Cecile crept beside her, a little pale shadow, in a white muslinfrock, adorned, however, as Lucy's vigilant eyes immediatelyperceived, with some very dainty and expensive embroidery. Themother's dress reminded her of that in which she first saw LouieGrieve; so did her splendid and reckless carriage; so did the wildplay of her black eyes, always on the watch for opportunities ofexplosion and offence. How did they get their dresses? Who paid forthem? And now they had come over to beg for more! Lucy could hardlykeep a civil tongue in her head at all, as her sister-in-law sweptround the room making strong and, to the mistress of the house, cutting remarks on the difference between 'Manchester dirt' andthe brightness and cleanliness of Paris. Why, she lorded it overthem as though the place belonged to her! 'And she is just apauper--living on what we give her!' thought Lucy to herself withexasperation. 

After supper, at which Louie behaved with the same indefinableinsolence--whether as regarded the food or the china, or the shakymoderator lamp, a relic from David's earliest bachelor days, whichonly he could coax into satisfactory burning--Lucy made the move, and said to her with cold constraint:

'Will you come into the drawing-room?--David has a pipe in thestudy after dinner. '

'I want to speak to David, ' said Louie, pushing back her chair withnoisy decision. 'I'll go with him. He can smoke as much as helikes--I'm used to it. '

'Well, then, come into my study, ' said David, trying to speakcheerfully. 'Lucy will look after Cecile. '

To Louie's evident triumph Cecile made difficulties about goingwith her aunt, but was at last persuaded by the prospect of seeingSandy in bed. She had already shown signs in her curious frightenedway of a considerable interest in Sandy. 

Then David led the way to the study. He put his sister into hisarmchair and stood pipe in hand beside her, looking down upon her. In his heart there was the passionate self-accusing sense that hecould not feel pity, or affection, or remorse for the past when shewas there; every look and word roused in him the old irritation, the old wish to master her, he had known so often in his youth. Yethe drew himself together, striving to do his best. 

Well, now, look here, ' said Louie defiantly, 'I want some money. '

'So I supposed, ' he said quietly, lighting his pipe. 

Louie reddened. 

'Well, and if I do want it, ' she said, breathing quickly, 'I've aright to want it. You chose to waste all that money--all mymoney--on that marrying business, and you must take theconsequence. I look upon it this way--you promised to put my moneyinto your trade and give me a fair share of your profits. Then youchucked it away--you made me spend it all, and now, of course, I'mto have nothing to say to your profits. Oh dear, no! It's a triflethat I'm a pauper and you're rolling in money compared to meanyway. Oh! it doesn't matter nothing to nobody--not at all! Allthe same you couldn't have made the start you did--not those fewmonths I was with you--without my money. Why can't you confess it, I want to know--and behave more handsome to me now--instead ofleaving me in that state that I haven't a franc to bless myselfwith!'

She threw herself back in her chair, with one arm flung behind herhead. David stared at her tongue-tied for a while by sheeramazement. 

'I gave you everything I had, ' he said, at last, with a slowdistinctness, ' all your money, and all my own too. When I came backhere, I had my new stock, it is true, but it was much of it unpaidfor. My first struggle was to get my neck out of debt. '

He paused, shrinking with a kind of sick repulsion from the memoryof that bygone year of shattered nerves and anguished effort. Deliberately he let thought and speech of it drop. Louie was thelast person in the world to whom he could talk of it. 

'I built up my business again, ' he resumed, 'by degrees. Mr. Doylelent me money--it was on that capital I first began to thrive. Fromthe very beginning, even in the very year when I handed over to youall our father's money--I sent you more. And every year since--youknow as well as I do--'

But again he looked away and paused. Once more he felt himself on awrong tack. What was the use of laying out, so to speak, all thathe had done in the sight of these angry eyes? Besides, a certainhigh pride restrained him. 

Louie looked a trifle disconcerted, and her flush deepened. Heraudacious attempt to put him in the wrong and provide herself witha grievance could not be carried on. She took refuge in passion. 

'Oh, I dare say you think you've done a precious lot!' she said, sitting straight up and locking her hands round her knee, while thewhole frame of her stiffened and quivered. 'I suppose you thinkother people would think so too. _I_ don't care! It don'tmatter to me. You're the only belonging I've got--who else wasthere for me to look to? Oh, it is all very fine! All I know is, Ican't stand my life any more! If you can't do anything, I'll justpack up my traps and go. _Somebody_'ll have to make it easierfor me, that's all! Last week--I was out of the house--he found outwhere I kept my money, he broke the lock open, and when I got homethere was nothing. _Nothing_, I tell you!' Her voice rose to ashrillness that made David look to see that the door between themand Lucy was securely closed. 'And I'd promised a whole lot ofthings to the church for Easter, and Cecile and I haven't got a ragbetween us; and as for the rent, the landlord may whistle for it!Oh! the beast!' she said, between her teeth, while the fierce tearsstood in her eyes. 

Lucy--any woman of normal shrewdness, putting two and twotogether--would have allowed these complaints about half theirclaimed weight. Upon David--unconsciously inclined to measure allemotion by his own standard--they produced an immediate and deepimpression. 

'You poor thing!' he murmured, as he stood looking down upon her. 

She tossed her head, as though resenting his compassion. 

'Yes, I'm about tired of it! I thought I'd come over and tell youthat. Now you know, --and if you hear things you don't like, don'tblame me, that's all!'

Her great eyes blazed into his. He understood her. Her child--thepriests--had, so far, restrained her. Now--what strange mixture ofshameless impulse--curiosity, greed, reckless despair--had drivenher here that she might threaten him thus!

'Ah, I dare say you think I've had a gay life of it over there withyour money, ' she went on, not allowing him to speak. '_My God!_'

She shrugged her shoulders, with a scornful laugh, while thetempest gathered within her. 

'Don't I know perfectly that for years I have been one of the mostbeautiful women in Paris! Ask the men who have painted me for theSalon--ask that brute who might have made a fortune out of me if hehadn't been the sot he is! And what have I got by it? What do otherwomen who are not a tenth part as good-looking as I am get by it? Acomfortable life, anyway! _Eh bien! essayons!--nous aussi. _'

The look she flung at him choked the words on his lips. 

'When I think of these ten years, ' she cried, 'I just wonder atmyself. There, --what you think about it I don't know, and I don'tcare. I might have had a good time, and I've had a _devil's_time. And, upon my word, I think I'll make a change!'

In her wild excitement she sprang up and began to pace the narrowroom. 

David watched her, fighting with himself, and with that inbredantipathy of temperament which seemed to paralyse both will andjudgment. Was the secret of it that in their profound unlikenessthey were yet so much alike?

Then he went up to her and made her sit down again. 

'Let me have a word now, ' he said quietly, though his hand as itgripped hers had a force of which he was unconscious. 'You say youwonder at yourself. Well, I can tell you this: other people havewondered too! When I left you in Paris ten years ago, I tell youfrankly, I had no hopes. I said to myself--don't rage at me!--withthat way of looking at things, and with such a husband, what chanceis there? And for some years now, Louie, I confess to you, I havebeen simply humbled and amazed to see what--what'--his voice sankand shook--'_love--and the fear of God_--can do. It has beenhard to be miserable and poor--I know that--but you have cared forCecile, and you have feared to shut yourself out from good peoplewho spoke to you in God's name. Don't do yourself injustice. Believe in yourself. Look back upon these years and be thankful. With all their miseries they have been a kind of victory! Will youthrow them away _now_? But your child is growing up and willunderstand. And there are hands to help--mine, always--always. '

He held out his to her, smiling. He could not have analysed his ownimpulse--this strange impulse which had led him to bless instead ofcursing. But its effect upon Louie was startling. She had lookedfor, perhaps in her fighting mood she had ardently desired, anoutburst of condemnation, against which her mad pleasure in thesound of her own woes and hatreds might once more spend itself. Andinstead of blaming and reproaching he had--

She stared at him. Then with a sudden giving way, which was a matterpartly of nerves and partly of surprise, she let her two arms fallupon the edge of the chair, and dropping her head upon them, burstout into wild sobbing. 

His own eyes were wet. He soothed her hurriedly and incoherently, told her he would spare her all the money he could; that he andLucy would do their best, but that she must not suppose they werevery rich. He did not regard all his money as his own. 

He went on to explain to her something of his business position. Her sobbing slackened and ceased. And presently, his mood changinginstinctively with hers, he became more vague and cautious instatement; his tone veered back towards that which he wasaccustomed to use to her. For, once her burst of passion over, hefelt immediately that she was once more criticising everything thathe said and did in her own interest. 

'Oh, I know you've become a regular Communist, ' she said sullenlyat last, drying her eyes in haste. ' Well, I tell you, I must have ahundred pounds. I can't do with a penny less than that. '

He tried to get out of her for what precise purposes she wanted it, and whether her husband had stolen from her the whole of thequarter's allowance he had just sent her. She answered evasively;he felt that she was telling him falsehoods; and once more hisheart grew dry within him. 

'Well, ' he said at last with a certain decision, 'I will do it if Ican, and I think I can do it. But, Louie, understand that I havegot Lucy and the child to think for, that I am not alone. '

'I should think she had got more than she could expect!' criedLouie, putting her hair straight with trembling hands. 

His cheek flushed at the sneer, but before he could reply she saidabruptly:

'Have you ever told her about Paris?'

'No, ' he said, with equal abruptness, his mouth taking a sternline, 'and unless I am forced to do so I never shall. That youunderstand, I know, for I spoke to you about it in Paris. My pastdied for me when I asked Lucy to be my wife. I do not ask you toremember this. I take it for granted. '

'I saw that woman the other day, ' said Louie with a strange smile, as she sat staring into the fire. 

He started, but he did not reply. He went to straighten some paperson his table. It seemed to him that he did not want her to say aword more, and yet he listened for it. 

'I remember they used to call her pretty, ' said Louie, a hatefulscorn shining in her still reddened eyes. 'She is just a littlefrump now--nobody would ever look at her twice. They say herhusband leads her a life. He poisoned himself at an operation andhas gone half crippled. She has to keep them both. She doesn't giveherself the airs she used to, anyway. '

David could bear it no longer. 

'I think you had better go and take Cecile to bed, ' he saidperemptorily. 'I heard it strike nine a few minutes ago. I will goand talk business to Lucy. '

She went with a careless air. As he saw her shut the door his heartfelt once more dead and heavy. A few minutes before there had beenthe flutter of a divine presence between them. Now he felt nothingbut the iron grip of character and life. And that little picturewhich her last words had left upon the mind--it carried with it ashock and dreariness he could only escape by hard work, that bestmedicine of the soul. He went out early next morning to hisprinting-office, spent himself passionately upon a day ofdifficulties, and came back refreshed. 

For the rest, he talked to Lucy, and with great difficultypersuaded her in the matter of the hundred pounds. Lucy'sindignation may be taken for granted, and the angry proofs sheheaped on David that Louie was an extravagant story-telling hussy, who spent everything she could get on dress and personal luxury. 

'Why, her dressing-table is like a perfumer's shop!' she cried inher wrath; 'what she does with all the messes I can't imagine--makesherself beautiful, I suppose! Why should we pay for it all? And Itell you she has got a necklace of real pearls. I know they arereal, for she told Lizzie'(Lizzie was the boy's nurse)'that shealways took them about with her to keep them safe out of herhusband's clutches--just imagine her talking to the girl like that!When will you be able to give _me_ real pearls, and where doyou suppose she got them?'

David preferred not to inquire. What could he do, he asked himselfin despair--what even could he know, unless Louie chose that heshould know it? But she, on the contrary, carefully avoided theleast recurrence to the threats of her first talk with him. 

Ultimately, however, he brought his wife round, and Louie wasinformed that she could have her hundred pounds, which should bepaid her on the day of her departure, but that nothing more, beyondher allowance, could or should be given her during the currentyear. 

She took the promise very coolly, but certainly made herself moreagreeable after it was given. She dressed up Cecile and set herdancing in the evenings, weird dances of a Spanish type, alternating between languor and a sort of 'possession, ' which hadbeen taught the child by a moustached violinist from Madrid, whoadmired her mother and paid Louie a fantastic and stormy homagethrough her child. She also condescended to take an interest inLucy's wardrobe. The mingled temper and avidity with which Lucyreceived her advances may be imagined. It made her mad to have itconstantly implied that her gowns and bonnets would not be worn bya maid-of-all-work in Paris. At the same time, when Louie's fingershad been busy with them it was as plain to her as to anyone elsethat they became her twice as well as they had before. So shesubmitted to be pinned and pulled about and tried on, keeping asmuch as possible on her dignity all the time, and reddening withfresh wrath each time that Louie made it plain to her that shethought her sister-in-law a provincial little fool, and was onlytroubling herself about her to pass the time. 

Dora, of course, came up to see Louie, and Louie was much morecommunicative to her than to either Lucy or David. She told storiesof her husband which made Dora's hair stand on end; but she boastedin great detail of her friendships with certain Legitimist ladiesof the bluest blood, with one of whom she had just held a_quete_ for some Catholic object on the stairs of the Salon. 'I was in blue and pink with a little silver, ' she said, lookingquickly behind her to see that Lucy was not listening. 'And Cecilewas a fairy, with spangled wings--the sweetest thing you ever saw. We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but asnobody took any notice of Madame de C--she has behaved like awasherwoman to me ever since. As if I could help her complexion orher age!'

But above all did she boast herself against Dora in Church matters. She would go to St. Damian's on Sunday, triumphantly announcingthat she should have to confess it as a sin when she got home, andafterwards, when Dora, as her custom was, came out to early dinnerwith the Grieves, Louie could not contain herself on the subject ofthe dresses, the processions, the decorations, the flowers, andceremonial trappings in general, with which _she_ might, ifshe liked, regale herself either at Ste. Eulalie or the Madeleine, in comparison with the wretched show offered by St. Damian's. Dora, after an early service and much Sunday-school, sat looking pale andweary under the scornful information poured out upon her. She wasoutraged by Louie's tone; yet she was stung by her contempt. Onceher gentleness was roused to speech, and she endeavoured to givesome of the reasons for rejecting the usurped authority of the'Bishop of Rome, ' in which she had been drilled at different times. But she floundered and came to grief. Her adversary laughed at her, and in the intervals of rating Cecile for having inked her dress, flaunted some shrill controversy which left them all staring. Louievindicating, the claims of the Holy See with much unction and anappropriate diction! It seemed to David, as he listened, that theirony of life could hardly be carried further. 

On the following day, David, not without a certain consciousness, said to John Dalby, his faithful helper through many years, and oflate his partner:

'My sister is up at our place, John, with her little girl. Lucywould be very glad if you would go in this evening to see them. '

John, who was already aware of the advent of Madame Montjoie, accepted the invitation and went. Louie received him with a mannerhalf mocking--half patronising--and made no effort whatever to beagreeable to him. She was preoccupied; and the stout, shy man inhis new suit only bored her. As for him, he sat and watched her;his small, amazed eyes took in her ways with Cecile, alternatelyboastful and tyrannical; her airs towards Lucy; her completeindifference to her brother's life and interests. When he got up togo, he took leave of her with all the old timid _gaucherie_. But if, when he entered the room, there had been anything left inhis mind of the old dream, he was a wholly free man when herecrossed the threshold. He walked home thinking much of a smallsolicitor's daughter, who worshipped at the Congregational chapelhe himself attended. He had been at David Grieve's side all theseyears; he loved him probably more than he would now love any woman;he devoted himself with ardour to the printing and selling of thevarious heretical works and newspapers published by Grieve & Co. ;and yet for some long time past he had been--and was likely toremain--a man of strong religious convictions, of a commonEvangelical type. 

The second week of Louie's stay was a much greater trial than thefirst to all concerned. She grew tired of dressing and patronisingLucy; her sharp eyes and tongue found out all her sister-in-law'sweak points; the two children were a fruitful source of jarring andjealousy between the mothers; and by the end of the week theirrelation was so much strained, and David had so much difficulty inkeeping the peace, that he could only pine for the Monday morningwhich was to see Louie's departure. Meanwhile nothing occurred togive him back his momentary hold upon her. She took great care notto be alone with him. It was as though she felt the presence of anew force in him, and would give it no chance of affecting her inmysterious and incalculable ways. 

On the Saturday before her last Sunday, Reuben Grieve arrived inManchester--with his wife. His nephew's letter and invitation hadthrown the old man into a great flutter. Ultimately his curiosityas to David's home and child--David himself he had seen severaltimes since the marriage--and the desire, which the more prosperousstate of his own circumstances allowed him to feel, to see whatLouie might be like after all these years--decided him to go. Andwhen he told Hannah of his intended journey, he found, to hisamazement, that she was minded to go too. 'If yo'll tell me when yogan me a jaunt last, I'll be obliged to yo!' she said sourly, andhe at once felt himself a selfish brute that he should have thoughtof taking the little pleasure without her. 

When they were seated in the railway-carriage, he broke out in asudden excitement:

'Wal, I never thowt, Hannah, to see yo do thissens naw moor!'

'Aye, yo wor allus yan to mak t' warst o' things, ' she said to him, as she slowly settled herself in her corner. 

Nevertheless, Reuben's feeling was amply justified. It had been aresurrection. The clever young doctor, brimful of new methods, whohad brought her round, had arrived just in time to stop the processof physical deterioration before it had gone too far; and therecovery of power both on the paralysed side and in general healthhad been marvellous. She walked with a stick, and was an old andblanched woman before her time. But her indomitable spirit was oncemore provided with its necessary means of expression. She was atleast as rude as ever, and it was as clear as anything can be inthe case of a woman who has never learnt to smile, that her visitto Manchester--the first for ten years--was an excitement andsatisfaction to her. 

David met them at the station; but Reuben persisted in going to anold-fashioned eating-house in the centre of the city, where he hadbeen accustomed to stay on the occasion of his rare visits toManchester, in spite of his nephew's repeated offers ofhospitality. 

'Noa, Davy, noa, ' he said, 'yo're a gen'leman now, and yo conno' bemoidered wi' oos. We'st coom and see yo--thank yo kindly, --bitwe'st do for oursels i' th' sleepin' way. '

To which Hannah gave a grim and energetic assent. 

When Louie had been told of their expected arrival she opened herblack eyes to their very widest extent. 

'Well, you'd better keep Aunt Hannah and me out of each other'sway, ' she remarked. 'I shall let her have it, you'll see. I'm boundto. ' A remark that David did his best to forget, seeing that theencounter was now past averting. 

When on Sunday afternoon the door of the Grieves's sitting-roomopened to admit Hannah and Reuben Grieve, Louie was lying halfasleep in an armchair by the fire, Cecile and Sandy were playingwith bricks in the middle of the floor, and Dora and Lucy werechatting on the sofa. 

Lucy, who had seen Reuben before, but had never set eyes on Hannah, sprang up ill at ease and awkward, but genuinely anxious to behavenicely to her husband's relations. 

'Won't you take a chair? I'll go and call David. He's in the nextroom. This is Miss Lomax. Louie!'

Startled by the somewhat sharp call, Louie sat up and rubbed hereyes. 

Hannah, resting on her stick, was standing in the middle ofthe floor. At sight of the familiar tyrannous face, grownparchment-white in place of its old grey hue--of the tall gauntfigure robed in the Sunday garb of rusty black which Louieperfectly remembered, and surmounted by the old head-gear--thestiff frizzled curls held in place by two small combs on thetemples, the black bandeau across the front of the head, and thetowering bonnet--Louie suddenly flushed and rose. 

'How do you do?' she said in a cool off-hand way, holding out herhand, which Hannah's black cotton glove barely touched. 'Well, UncleReuben, do you think I'm grown? I have had about time to, anyway, since you saw me. That's my little girl. '

With a patronising smile she pushed forward Cecile. Theshort-sighted tremulous Reuben, staring uncomfortably about him atthe town splendours in which 'Davy' lived, had to have the child'shand put into his by Dora before he could pull himself togetherenough to respond. 

'I'm glad to see tha, my little dear. ' he said, awkwardly droppinghis hat and umbrella as he stooped to salute her. 'I'm sure yo'revarra kind, miss'--This was said apologetically to Dora, who hadpicked up his belongings and put them on a chair. 'Wal, Louie, shedoan't feature her mither mich, as I can see. '

He looked hurriedly at his wife for confirmation. Hannah, who hadseated herself on the highest and plainest chair she could find, stared the child up and down, and then slowly removed her eyes, saying nothing. Instantly her manner woke the old rage in Louie, who was observing her excitedly. 

'Come here to me, Cecile. I'd be sorry, anyway, if you were likewhat your mother was at your age. You'd be a poor, ill-treated, half-starved little wretch if you were!'

Hannah started, but not unpleasantly. Her grim mouth curved with asort of satisfaction. It was many years since she had enjoyed thoseopportunities for battle which Louie's tempers had once so freelyafforded her. 

'She's nobbut a midge, ' she remarked audibly to Dora, who had justtried to propitiate her by a footstool. 'The chilt looks as thooshe'd been fed on spiders or frogs, or summat o' that soart. '

At this moment David came in, just in time to prevent anotherexplosion from Louie. He was genuinely glad to see his guests; hisfeeling of kinship was much stronger now than it ever had been inhis youth; and in these years of independent, and on the wholehappy, living he had had time to forget even Hannah's enormities. 

'Well, have you got a comfortable inn?' he asked Reuben presently, when some preliminaries were over. 

'I thank yo kindly, Davy, ' said Reuben cautiously, 'we're meeterlyweel sarved; bit yo conno look for mich fro teawn folk. '

'What are yo allus so mealy-mouthed for?' said his wifeindignantly. 'Why conno yo say reet out 'at it's a pleeace not fitfor ony decent dog to put his head in, an' an ill-mannertdaggle-tail of a woman to keep it, as I'd like to sweep out wi th'bits of a morning, an' leave her on th' muck-heap wheer shebelongs?'

David laughed. To an ear long accustomed to the monotony of towncivilities there was a not unwelcome savour of the moors even inthese brutalities of Hannah's. 

'Sandy, where are you?' he said, looking round. 'Have you had a lookat him, Aunt Hannah?'

Sandy, who was sitting in the midst of his bricks sucking his thumbpatiently till Cecile should be given back to him by her mother, and these invaders should be somehow dispersed, looked up and gavehis father a sleepy and significant nod, as much as to say, 'Leaveme alone, and turn these people out. '

But David lifted him up, and carried him off for exhibition. Hannahlooked at him, as he lay lazily back on his father's arm; his faircurls straying over David's coat, his cheek flushed by the heat. 'Aye, he's a gradely little chap, ' she said, more graciously itseemed to David than he ever remembered to have heard Hannah Grievespeak before. His paternal vanity was instantly delighted. 

'Sit up, Sandy, and tell your great-uncle and aunt about the finegames you've been having with your cousin. '

But Sandy was lost in quite other reflections. He looked out uponHannah and Reuben with grave filmy eyes, as though from a vastdistance, and said absently:

'Daddy!'

'Yes, Sandy, speak up. '

'Daddy, when everybody in the world was babies, who put 'em to bed?'

The child spoke as usual with a slow flute-like articulation, sothat every word could be heard. Reuben and Hannah turned and lookedat each other. 

'Lord alive!' cried Hannah 'whativer put sich notions into th'chilt's yed?'

David, with a happy twinkle in his eye, held up a hand for silence. 

'I don't know, Sandy; give it up. '

Sandy considered a second or two, then said, with the sigh of onewho relinquishes speculation in favor of the conventional solution:

'I s'pose God did. '

His tone was dejected, as though he would gladly have come toanother conclusion if he could. 

'Reuben, ' said Hannah with severity, 'hand me that sugar-stick. '

Reuben groped in his pockets for the barley-sugar, which, in spiteof Hannah's scoffs, he had bought in Market Street the eveningbefore, 'for t' childer. ' He watched his wife in gaping astonishmentas he saw her approaching Sandy, with blandishments which, roughand clumsy as they were, had nevertheless the effect of beguilingthat young man on to the lap where barley-sugar was to be had. Hannah fed him triumphantly, making loud remarks on his beauty andcleverness. 

Meanwhile Louie stood on the other side of the fire, holding Cecileclose against her, with a tight defiant grip--her lip twitchingcontemptuously. David, always sensitively alive to her presence andher moods, insisted in the midst of Sandy's feast that Cecileshould have her share. Sandy held out the barley-sugar, followingit with wistful eyes. Louie beat down Cecile's grasping hand. 'Youshan't spoil your tea--you'll be sick with that stuff!' she saidimperiously. Hannah turned, and brought a slow venomous scrutiny tobear upon her niece--on the slim tall figure in the elegantParisian dress, the daintily curled and frizzled head, the wildangry eyes. Then she withdrew her glance, contented. Louie'sevident jealousy appeased her. She had come to Manchester with onefixed determination--not to be 'talked foine to by that hizzy. '

At this juncture tea made its appearance, Lucy having some time agogiven up the sit-down tea in the dining-room, which was the naturalcustom of her class, as not genteel. She seated herself nervouslyto pour it out. Hannah had at the very beginning put her down 'as amiddlin' soart o' person, ' and vouchsafed her very little notice. 

'Auntie Dora! auntie Dora!' cried Sandy, escaping from Hannah'sknee, 'I'm coming to sit by zoo. '

And as soon as he had got comfortably into her pocket, he pulledher head down and whispered to her, his thoughts running as beforein the theological groove, 'Auntie Dora, God made me--and God madeCecile--_did_ God make that one?'

And he nodded across at Hannah, huddling himself together meanwhilein a paroxysm of glee and mischief. He was excited by theflatteries he had been receiving, and Dora, thankful to see thatHannah had heard nothing, could only quiet him by copious suppliesof bread and butter. 

David wooed Cecile to sit on a stool beside him, and things wentsmoothly for a time, though Hannah made it clearly evident thatthis was not the kind of tea she had expected, and that she 'didn'thowd wi' new-fangled ways o' takkin' your vittles. ' Reuben did hisbest to cover and neutralise her remarks by gossip to David aboutthe farm and the valley. 'Eh--it's been nobbut _raggy_ weatherup o' the moors this winter, Davy, an' a great lot o' sheep lost. Nobbut twothrey o' mine, I thank th' Lord. ' But in the midst of amost unflattering account of the later morals and development ofthe Wigson family, Reuben stopped dead short, with a stare at thedoor. 

'Wal, aa niver!--theer's Mr. Ancrum hissel, --I do uphowd yo!'

And the old man rose with effusion, his queer eyes and face beamingand blinking with a light of affectionate memory, for Ancrum stoodin the doorway, smiling a mute inquiry at Lucy as to whether hemight come in. David sprang up to bring him into the circle. Hannahheld out an ungracious hand. Never, all these years, had sheforgiven the ex-minister those representations he had once made onthe subject of David's 'prenticing. 

Then the new-comer sat down by Reuben cheerily, parrying thefarmer's concern about his altered looks, and watching Louie, whohad thrown him a careless word in answer to his greeting. Dora, whohad come to know him well, and to feel much of the affectionatereverence for him that David did, in spite of some bewilderment asto his religious position, went round presently to talk to him, andSandy as it happened was left on his stool for a minute or twoforgotten. He asked his mother plaintively for cake, and she didnot hear him. Meanwhile Cecile had cake, and he followed her eatingof it with resentful eyes. 

'Come here, Cecile, ' said David, 'and hold the cake while I cut it;there's a useful child. '

He handed a piece to Reuben, and then put the next into Cecile'shand. 

'Ready for some more, little woman?'

Cecile in a furtive squirrel-like way seized the piece and wasretiring with it, when Sandy, beside himself, jumped from hisstool, rushed at his cousin and beat her wildly with his smallfists. 

'Yo're a geedy thing--a geedy 'gustin' thing!' he cried, sobbingpartly because he wanted the cake, still more because, after hisexaltation on Hannah's knee, he had been so unaccountablyneglected. To see Cecile battening on a second piece while he wasdenied a first was more than could be borne. 

'You little viper, you!' exclaimed Louie, and springing up, sheswept across to Sandy, and boxed his ears smartly, just as she wasaccustomed to box Cecile's, whenever the fancy took her. 

The child raised a piercing cry, and David caught him up. 

'Give him to me, David, give him to me, ' cried Lucy, who had almostupset the tea-table in her rush to her child. 'I'll see whether thatsister of yours shall beat and abuse my boy in my own house! Oh, she may beat her own child as much as she pleases, she does it allday long! If she were a poor person she would be had up. '

Her face glowed with passion. The exasperation of many days spokein her outburst. David, himself trembling with anger, in vain triedto quiet her and Sandy. 

'Ay, I reckon she maks it hot wark for them 'at ha to live wi her, 'said Hannah audibly, looking round on the scene with a certainenjoyment which contrasted with the panic and distress of the rest. 

Louie, who was holding Cecile--also in tears--in her arms, swepther fierce, contemptuous gaze from Lucy to her ancient enemy. 

'You must be putting in _your_ word, must you?--you old toad, you--you that robbed us of our money till your own husband wasashamed of you!'

And, totally regardless of the presence of Dora and Ancrum, and ofthe efforts made to silence her by Dora or by the flushed andunhappy Reuben, she descended on her foe. She flung charge aftercharge in Hannah's face, showing the minutest and most vindictivememory for all the sordid miseries of her childhood; and then whenher passion had spent itself on her aunt, she returned to Lucy, exulting in the sobs and the excitement she had produced. In vaindid David try either to silence her or to take Lucy away. Nothingbut violence could have stopped the sister's tongue; his wife, under a sort of fascination of terror and rage, would not move. Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David--of the money shehad come to ask--of her leave-taking on the morrow--to the winds, Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been graduallyroused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidentsof the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; shesneered at her attempts to ape her betters, shrilly declaring thatno one would ever take her for anything else than what she was, thedaughter of a vulgar cheese-paring old hypocrite; and, finally, sheattacked Sandy as a nasty, greedy, abominable little monkey, notfit to associate with her child, and badly in want of the stick. 

Then slowly she retreated to the door out of breath, the wildlightnings of her eyes flashing on them still. David was holdingthe hysterical Lucy, while Dora was trying to quiet Sandy. Otherwise a profound silence had fallen on them all, a silencewhich seemed but to kindle Louie's fury the more. 

'Ah, you think you've got him in your power, him and his money, youlittle white-livered cat!' she cried, standing in the doorway, andfixing Lucy with a look beneath which her sister-in-law quailed, and hid her face on David's arm. 'You think you'll stop him givingit to them that have a right to look to him? Perhaps you'd betterlook out; perhaps there are people who know more about him thanyou. Do you think he would ever have looked at you, you littlepowsement, if he hadn't been taken on the rebound?'

She gave a mad laugh as she flung out the old Derbyshire word ofabuse, and stood defying them, David and all. David strode forwardand shut the door upon her. Then he went tenderly up to his wife, and took her and Sandy into the library. 

The sound of Cecile's wails could be heard in the distance. Thefrightened Reuben turned and looked at his wife. She had grownpaler even than before, but her eyes were all alive. 

'A racklesome, natterin' creetur as ivir I seed, ' she said calmly;'I allus telt tha, Reuben Grieve, what hoo'd coom to. It's bred inher--that's yan thing to be hodden i' mind. But I'll shift her indouble quick-sticks if she ever cooms meddlin' i' _my_ house, Reuben Grieve--soa yo know. '

'She oughtn't to stay here, ' said Ancrum in a quick undertone toDora; 'she might do that mother and child a mischief. '

Dora sat absorbed in her pity for David, in her passionate sympathyfor this home that was as her own. 

'She is going to-morrow, thank God!' she said with a long breath;'oh, what an awful woman!'

Ancrum looked at her with a little sad smile. 

'Whom are you sorry for?' he asked. 'Those two in there?' and henodded towards the library. 'Think again, Miss Dora. There is oneface that will haunt me whenever I think of this--the face of thatFrench child. '

All the afternoon visitors dispersed. The hours passed. Lucy, wornout, had gone to bed with a crying which seemed to have in it somenew and heavy element she would not speak of, even to David. Theevening meal came, and there was no sign or sound from that roomupstairs where Louie had locked herself in. 

David stood by the fire in the dining-room, his lips sternly set. He had despatched a servant to Louie's door with an offer to sendup food for her and Cecile. But the girl had got no answer. Was hebound to go--bound to bring about the possible renewal of adegrading scene?

At this moment Lizzie, the little nurse, tapped at the door. 

'If you please, sir--'

'Yes. Anything wrong with Master Sandy?'

David went to the door in a tremor. 'He won't go to sleep, sir. Hewants you, and I'm afraid he'll disturb mistress again. '

David ran upstairs. 

'Sandy, what do you want?'

Sandy was crying violently, far down under the bedclothes. WhenDavid drew him out, he was found to be grasping a piece ofcrumbling cake, sticky with tears. 

'It's Cecile's cake, ' he sobbed into his father's ear. 'I want togive it her. '

And in fact, after his onslaught upon her, Cecile had dropped theoffending cake, which he had instantly picked up the moment beforeLouie struck him. He had held it tight gripped ever since, andrepentance was busy in his small heart. 

David thought a moment. 

'Come with me, Sandy, ' he said at last, and, wrapping up the childin an old shawl that hung near, he carried him off to Louie's door. 'Louie!' he called, after his knock, in a low voice, for he wasuncomfortably aware that his household was on the watch fordevelopments. 

For a while there was no answer. Sandy, absorbed in the interest ofthe situation, clung close to his father and stopped crying. 

At last Louie suddenly flung the door wide open. 

'What do you want?' she said defiantly, with the gesture andbearing of a tragic actress. She was, however, deadly white, andDavid, looking past her, saw that Cecile was lying wide awake inher little bed. 

'Sandy wants to give Cecile her cake, ' he said quietly, 'and totell her that he is sorry for striking her. '

He carried his boy up to Cecile. A smile flashed over the child'sworn face. She held out her little arms. David, infinitely touched, laid down Sandy, and the children crooned together on the samepillow, he trying to stuff the cake into Cecile's mouth, she gentlyrefusing. 

'She's ill, ' said Louie abruptly, 'she's feverish--I want adoctor. '

'We can get one directly, ' he said. 'Will you come down and havesome food? Lucy has gone to bed. If Lizzie comes and sits by thechildren, perhaps they will go to sleep. I can carry Sandy backlater. '

Louie paused irresolutely. Then she went up to the bed, knelt downby it, and took Cecile in her arms. 

'You can take him away, ' she said, pointing to Sandy. 'I will puther to sleep. Don't you send me anything to eat. I want a doctor. And if you won't order a fly for me at twenty minutes to nineto-morrow, I will go out myself, that's all. '

'Louie!' he cried, holding out his hand to her in despair, 'why willyou treat us in this way--what have we done to you?'

'Never you mind, ' she said sullenly, gathering the child to her andconfronting him with steady eyes. There was a certain magnificencein their wide unconscious despair--in this one fierce passion. 

She and Lucy did not meet again. In the morning David paid her herhundred pounds, and took her and Cecile to the station, a doctorhaving seen the child the night before, and prescribed medicine, which had given her a quiet night. Louie barely thanked him for themoney. She was almost silent and still very pale. 

Just before they parted, the thought of the tyranny of such anature, of the life to which she was going back, wrung thebrother's heart. The outrage of the day before dropped from hismind as of no account, effaced by sterner realities. 

'Write to me, Louie!' he said to her just as the train was movingoff; 'I could always come if there was trouble--or Dora. '

She did not answer, and her hand dropped from his. But heremembered afterwards that her eyes were fixed upon him, as long asthe train was in sight, and the picture of her dark possessed lookwill be with him to the end. 

CHAPTER VII

It was a warm April Sunday. Lucy and Dora were pacing up and downin the garden, and Lucy was talking in a quick, low voice. 

'Oh! there was something, Dora. You know as well as I do there wassomething. That awful woman didn't say that for nothing. I supposehe'd tell me if I asked him. '

'Then why don't you ask him?' said Dora, with a little frown. 

Lucy gathered a sprig of budding lilac, and restlessly stripped offits young green. 

'It isn't very pleasant, ' she said at last, slowly. 'I dare say it'ssilly to expect your husband never to have looked at anybodyelse--'

She paused again, unable to explain herself. Dora glanced at her, and was somewhat struck by her thin and worn appearance. She hadoften, moreover, seemed to her cousin to be fretting during theselast weeks. Not that there was much difference in her ways withDavid and Sandy. But her small vanities, prejudices, and passionswere certainly less apparent of late; she ordered her two servantsabout less; she was less interested in her clothes, less eager forsocial amusement. It was as though something clouding and dullinghad passed over a personality which was naturally restless andvivacious. 

Yet it was only to-day, in the course of some conversation aboutLouie, of whom nothing had been heard since her departure, thatLucy had for the first time broken silence on the subject of thoseinsolent words of her sister-in-law, which Ancrum and Dora hadlistened to with painful shock, while to Reuben and Hannah, pre-occupied with their own long-matured ideas of Louie, they hadbeen the mere froth of a venomous tongue. 

'Why didn't you ask him about it at first--just after?' Doraresumed. 

'I didn't want to, ' said Lucy, after a minute, and then would sayno more. But she walked along, thinking, unhappily, of the momentwhen David had taken her into the library to be out of the sound ofLouie's rage; of her angry desire to ask him questions, checked bya childish fear she could not analyse, as to hat the answers mightbe; of his troubled, stormy face; and of the tender ways by whichhe tried to calm and comfort her. It had seemed to her that once ortwice he had been on the point of saying something grave andunusual, but in the end he had refrained. Louie had gone away;their everyday life had begun again; he had been very full, in theintervals of his hard daily business, of the rebuilding of theJames Street court, and of the apprentices' school; and, led by avariety of impulses--by a sense of jeopardised possession and aconscience speaking with new emphasis and authority--she had takencare that he should talk to her about both; she had haunted him inthe library, and her presence there, once the signal of antagonismand dispute, had ceased to have any such meaning for him. Hersympathy was not very intelligent, and there was at times achildish note of sulkiness and reluctance in it; she was extremelyready to say, 'I told you so, ' if anything went wrong; but, nevertheless, there was a tacit renunciation at the root of her newmanner to him which he perfectly understood, and rewarded in hisown ardent, affectionate way. 

As she sauntered along in this pale gleam of sun, now drinking inthe soft April wind, now stooping to look at the few clumps ofcrocuses and daffodils which were pushing through the blackenedearth, Lucy had once more a vague sense that her life thisspring--this past year--had been hard. It was like the feeling ofone who first realises the intensity of some long effort orstruggle in looking back upon it. Her little life had been breathedinto by a divine breath, and growth, expansion, had brought a painand discontent she had never known before. 

Dora meanwhile had her own thoughts. She was lost in memories ofthat first talk of hers with David Grieve after his return fromParis, with the marks of his fierce, mysterious grief fresh uponhim; then, pursuing her recollection of him through the years, shecame to a point of feeling where she said, with sudden energy, throwing her arm round Lucy, and taking up the thread of theirconversation:--

'I wouldn't let what Louie said worry you a bit, Lucy. Of course, she wanted to make mischief; but you know, and I know, what sort ofa man David has been since you and he were married. That'll beenough for you, I should think. '

Lucy flushed. She had once possessed very little reticence, and hadbeen quite ready to talk her husband over, any day and all day, with Dora. But now, though she would begin in the old way, theresoon came a point when something tied her tongue. 

This time she attacked the lilac-bushes again with a restless hand. 

'Why, I thought you were shocked at his opinions, ' she said, proudly. 

Dora sighed. Her conscience had not waited for Lucy's remark tomake her aware of the constant perplexity between authority andnatural feeling into which David's ideals were perpetually throwingher. 

'They make one very sad, ' she said, looking away. 'But we mustbelieve that God, who sees everything, judges as we cannot do. '

Lucy fired up at once. It annoyed her to have Dora making spiritualallowance for David in this way. 

'I don't believe God wants anything but that people should be good, 'she said. 'I am sure there are lots of things like that in the NewTestament. '

Dora shook her head slowly. '"He that hath not the Son, hath notlife, "' she said under her breath, a sudden passion leaping to hereye. 

Lucy looked at her indignantly. 'I don't agree with you, Dora--there! And it all depends on what things mean. '

'The meaning is quite plain, ' said Dora, with rigid persistence. 'OLucy, don't be led away. I missed you at early service thismorning. '

The look she threw her cousin melted into a pathetic and heavenlyreproach. 

'Well, I know, ' said Lucy, ungraciously, 'I was tired. I don't knowwhat's wrong with me these last weeks; I can't get up in themorning. '

Dora only looked grieved. Lucy understood that her plea seemed toher cousin too trivial and sinful to be noticed. 

'Oh! I dare say I'd go, ' she said in her own mind, defiantly, 'if_he_ went. '

Aloud, she said:--

'Dora, just look at this cheek of mine; I can't think whatthe swelling is. '

And she turned her right cheek to Dora, pointing to a lump, notdiscoloured, but rather large, above the cheek-bone. Dora stopped, and looked at it carefully. 

'Yes, I had noticed it, ' she said. 'It is odd. Can't you account forit in any way?'

'No. It's been coming some little while. David says I must ask Dr. Mildmay about it. I don't think I shall. It'll go away. Oh! therethey are. '

As she spoke, David and Sandy, who had been out for a Sunday walktogether, appeared on the steps of the garden-door. David waved hishat to his wife, an example immediately followed by Sandy, whotwisted his Scotch cap madly, and then set off running to her. 

Lucy looked at them both with a sudden softening and brighteningwhich gave her charm. David came up to her, ran his arm throughhers, and began to give her a laughing account of Sandy'sbehaviour. The April wind had flushed him, tumbled his black hair, and called up spring lights in the eyes, which had been somewhatdimmed by overmuch sedentary work and a too small allowance ofsleep. His plenitude of virile energy, the glow of health and powerwhich hung round him this afternoon, did but make Lucy seem morelanguid and faded as she hung upon him, smiling at his stories oftheir walk and of Sandy's antics. 

He broke off in the middle, and looked at her anxiously. 

'She isn't the thing, is she, Dora? I believe she wants a change. '

'Oh! thank you!' cried Lucy, ironically--'with all Sandy's springthings and my own to look to, and some new shirts to get for you, and the spring cleaning to see to. Much obliged to you. '

'All those things, madam, ' said David, patting her hand, 'wouldn'tmatter twopence, if it should please your lord and master to orderyou off. And if this fine weather goes on, you'll have to takeadvantage of it. By the way, I met Mildmay, and asked him to comein and see you. '

Lucy reddened. 

'Why, there's nothing, ' she said, pettishly. 'This'll go awaydirectly. ' Instinctively she put up her hand to her cheek. 

'Oh! Mildmay won't worry you, ' said David; 'he'll tell you what'swrong at once. You know you like him. '

'Well, I must go, ' said Dora. 

They understood that she had a mill-girls' Bible class at half-pastfive, and an evening service an hour later, so they did not pressher to stay. Lucy kissed her, and Sandy escorted her halfway to thegarden-door, giving her a breathless and magniloquent account ofthe 'hy'nas and kangawoos' she might expect to find congregated inthe Merton Road outside. Dora, who was somewhat distressed by hispowers of imaginative fiction, would not 'play up' as his fatherdid, and he left her half-way to run back to David, who was alwaysready to turn road and back garden into 'Africa country' at amoment's notice, and people it to order with savages, elephants, boomerangs, kangaroos, and all other possible or impossible thingsthat Sandy might chance to want. 

Dora, looking back from the garden, saw them all three in a grouptogether--Sandy tugging at his mother's skirts, and shouting at thetop of his voice; David's curly black head bent over his wife, whowas gathering her brown shawl round her throat, as though the lightwind chilled her. But there was no chill in her look. That, for themoment, as she swayed between husband and child, had in it thequalities of the April sun--a brightness and promise all the moreradiant by comparison with the winter or the cloud from which ithad emerged. 

Dora went home as quickly as tramcar and fast walking could takeher. She still lived in the same Ancoats rooms with hershirt-making friend, who had kept company, poor thing! for fouryears with a young man, and had then given him up with anguishbecause he was not 'the sort of man she'd been taking him for, 'though no one but Dora had ever known what qualities or practices, intolerable to a pure mind, the sad phrase covered. Dora might longago have moved to more comfortable rooms and a better quarter ofthe town had she been so minded, for her wages as an admirableforewoman and an exceptionally skilled hand were high; but shepassionately preferred to be near St. Damian's and amongst her'girls. ' Also, there was the thought that by staying in the placewhither she had originally moved she would be more easilydiscoverable if ever, --ay, if _ever_--Daddy should come backto her. She was certain that he was still alive; and great as theprobabilities on the other side became with every passing year, fewpeople had the heart to insist upon them in the face of hersensitive faith, whereof the bravery was so close akin to tears. 

Only once in all these years had there been a trace of Daddy. Through a silk-merchant acquaintance of his, having relations withLyons and other foreign centres, David had once come across arumour which had seemed to promise a clue. He had himself goneacross to Lyons at once, and had done all he could. But the cluebroke in his hand, and the tanned, long-faced lunatic fromManchester, whereof report had spoken, could be only doubtfullyidentified with a man who bore no likeness at all to Daddy. 

Dora's expectation and hope had been stirred to their depths, andshe bore her disappointment hardly. But she did not therefore ceaseto hope. Instinctively on this Sunday night, when she reached home, she put Daddy's chair, which had been pushed aside, in its rightplace by the fire, and she tenderly propped up a stuffed bird, originally shot by Daddy in the Vosges, and now vilely overtaken byManchester moths. Then she set round chairs and books for hergirls. 

Soon they came trooping up the stairs, in their neat Sundaydresses, so sharply distinguished from the mill-gear of the week, and she spent with them a moving and mystical hour. She wasexpounding to them a little handbook of 'The Blessed Sacrament, 'and her explanations wound up with a close appeal to each one ofthem to make more use of the means of grace, to surrenderthemselves more fully to the awful and unspeakable mystery by whichthe Lord gave them His very flesh to eat, His very blood to drink, so fashioning within them, Communion after Communion, the immortaland incorruptible body which should be theirs in the Resurrection. 

She spoke in a low, vibrating voice, somewhat monotonous in tone;her eyes shone with strange light under her round, prominent brow;all that she said of the joys of frequent Communion, of the mortalperils of unworthy participation, of treating the heavenly foodlightly--coming to it, that is, unfasting and unprepared--of theneed especially of Lenten self-denial, of giving up 'what each oneof you likes best, so far as you can, ' in preparation for the greatEaster Eucharist--came evidently from the depths of her own intenseconviction. Her girls listened to her with answering excitement andawe; one of them she had saved from drink, all of them had been herSunday-school children for years, and many of them possessed, underthe Lancashire exterior, the deep-lying poetry and emotion of theNorth. 

When she dismissed them she hurried off to church, to sit once moredissolved in feeling, aspiration, penitence; to feel the thrill ofthe organ, the pathos of the bare altar, and the Lenten hymns. 

After the service she had two or three things to settle with one ofthe curates and with some of her co-helpers in the good works ofthe congregation, so that when she reached home she was late andtired out. Her fellow-lodger was spending the Sunday with friends;there was no one to talk to her at her supper; and after supper shefell, sitting by the fire, into a mood of some flatness andreaction. She tried to read a religious book, but the religiousnerve could respond no more, and other interests, save those of herdaily occupations, she had none. 

In Daddy's neighbourhood, what with his travels, his whims, and hisquotations, there had been always something to stir the daughter'smind, even if it were only to reprobation. But since he had lefther the circle of her thoughts had steadily and irrevocablynarrowed. All secular knowledge, especially the reading of otherthan religious books, had become gradually and painfullyidentified, for her, with those sinister influences which madeDavid Grieve an 'unbeliever, ' and so many of the best Manchesterworkmen 'atheists. '

So now, in her physical and moral slackness, she sat and thoughtwith some bitterness of a 'young woman' who had recently enteredthe shop which employed her, and, by dint of a clever tongue, wasgaining the ear of the authorities, to the disturbance of some ofDora's cherished methods of distributing and organising the work. They might have trusted her more after all these years; but nobodyappreciated her; she counted for nothing. 

Then her mind wandered on to the familiar grievances of Sandy'sreligious teaching and Lucy's gradual defection from St. Damian's. She must make more efforts with Lucy, even if it angered David. Shelooked back on what she had done to bring about the marriage, andlashed herself into a morbid sense of responsibility. 

But her missionary projects were no more cheering to her than herthoughts about the shop and her work, and she felt an intense senseof relief when she heard the step of her room-mate, Mary Styles, upon the stairs. She made Mary go into every little incident of herday; she was insatiable for gossip--a very rare mood for her--andcould not be chattered to enough. 

And all through she leant her head against her father's chair, recalling Lucy on her husband's arm, and the child at her skirts, with the pathetic inarticulate longing which makes the tragedy ofthe single life. She could have loved so well, and no one had everwished to make her his wife; the wound of it bled sometimes in herinmost heart. 

Meanwhile, on this same April Sunday, Lucy, after Sandy was safe inbed, brought down some needlework to do beside David while he read. It was not very long since she had induced herself to make so greata breach in the Sunday habits of her youth. As soon as David'sideals began to tease her out of thought and sympathy, his freedomsalso began to affect her. She was no longer so much chilled by hisstrictness, or so much shocked by his laxity. 

David had spoken of a busy evening. In reality, a lazy fit overtookhim. He sat smoking, and turning over the pages of Eckermann's'Conversations with Goethe. '

'What are you reading?' said Lucy at last, struck by his face ofenjoyment. 'Why do you like it so much?'

'Because there is no one else in the world who hits the right nailon the head so often as Goethe, ' he said, throwing himself backwith a stretch of pleasure. 'So wide a brain--so acute and sane atemper!'

Lucy looked a little lost, as she generally did when David madeliterary remarks to her. But she did not drop the subject. 

'You said something to Professor Madgwick the other day about aline of Goethe you used to like so when you were a boy. What did itmean?'

She flushed, as though she were venturing on something which wouldmake her ridiculous. 

'A line of Goethe?' repeated David, pondering. 'Oh! I know. Yes, itwas a line from Goethe's novel of "Werther. " When I was young andfoolish--when you and I were first acquainted, in fact, and youused to scold me for going to the Hall of Science!--I often saidthis line to myself over and over. I didn't know much German, butthe swing of it carried me away. '

And, with a deep voice and rhythmic accent, he repeated:'_Handwerker trugen ihn; kein Geistlicher hat ihn begleitet_. '

'What does it mean?' said Lucy. 

'Well, it comes at the end of the story. The hero commits suicidefor love, and Goethe says that at his burial, on the night afterhis death, "labouring men bore him; no priest went with him. "'

He bent forward, clasping his hands tightly, with the half smiling, half dreamy look of one who recalls a bygone thrill of feeling, partly in sympathy, partly in irony. 

'Then he wasn't a Christian?' said Lucy, wondering. 'Do you stillhate priests so much, David?'

'It doesn't look like it, does it, madam, ' he said, laughing, 'whenyou think of all my clergymen friends?'

And, in fact, as Lucy's mind pondered his answer, she easilyremembered the readiness with which any of the clergy at St. Damian's would ask his help in sending away a sick child, or givinga man a fresh start in life, or setting the necessary authoritiesto work in the case of some moral or sanitary scandal. She thoughtalso of various Dissenting ministers who called on him andcorresponded with him; of his reverent affection for Canon Aylwin, for Ancrum. 

'Well, anyway, you care about the labouring men, ' she went onpersistently. 'I suppose you're what father used to call a "cantingSocialist"?'

'No, ' said David, quietly--'no, I'm not a Socialist, except'--andhe smiled--'in the sense in which some one said the other day, "weare all Socialists now. "'

'Well, what does it mean?' said Lucy, threading another needle, andfeeling a certain excitement in this prolonged mental effort. 

David tried to explain to her the common Socialist ideal in simpleterms--the hope of a millennium, when all the instruments ofproduction shall be owned by the State, and when the surplus profitproduced by labour, over and above the maintenance of the workerand the general cost of production, will go, not to the capitalist, the individual rich man, but to the whole community of workers;when everybody will be made to work, and as little advantage aspossible will be allowed to one worker above another. 

'I think it's absurd!' said Lucy, up in arms at once for all thesuperiorities she loved. 'What nonsense! Why, they can't ever do it!'

'Well, it's about that!' said David, smiling at her. 'Still, no doubt it _could_ be done, if it ought to be done. ButSocialism, as a system, seems to _me_, at any rate, to strikedown and weaken the most precious thing in the world, that on whichthe whole of civilised life and progress rests--the spring of willand conscience in the individual. Socialism as a spirit, as aninfluence, is as old as organised thought--and from the beginningit has forced us to think of the many when otherwise we should besunk in thinking of the one. But, as a modern dogmatism, it is likeother dogmatisms. The new truth of the future will emerge from itas a bud from its sheath, taking here and leaving there. ' He satlooking into the fire, forgetting his wife a little. 

'Well, any way, I'm sure you and I won't have anything to do withit, ' said Lucy positively. 'I don't a bit believe Lady Driffieldwill have to work in the mills, though Mrs. Shepton did say itwould do her good. I shouldn't mind something, perhaps, which wouldmake her and Colonel Danby less uppish. '

She drew her needle in and out with vindictive energy. 

'Well, I don't see much prospect of uppish people dying out of theworld, ' said David, throwing himself back in his chair; 'until--'

He paused. 

'Until what?' inquired Lucy. 

'Well, of course, ' he said after a minute, in a low voice, 'we mustalways hold that the world is tending to be better, that the DivineLife in it will somehow realise itself, that pride will becomegentleness, and selfishness love. But the better life cannot beimposed from without--it must grow from within. '

Lucy pondered a moment. 

'Then is it--is it because you think working-men _better_ thanother people that you are so much more interested in them? Becauseyou are, you know. '

'Oh dear no!' he said, smiling at her from under the hand whichshaded his eyes; 'they have their own crying faults and follies. But--so many of them lack the first elementary conditions whichmake the better life possible--that is what tugs at one's heartand fills one's mind! How can _we_--we who have gained forourselves health and comfort and knowledge--how can we stand bypatiently and see our brother diseased and miserable and ignorant?--how can we bear our luxuries, so long as a child is growing up insavagery whom we might have taught, --or a man is poisoning himselfwith drink whom we might have saved, --or a woman is dropping fromsorrow and overwork whom we might have cherished and helped? We arenot our own--we are parts of the whole. Generations of workers havetoiled for us in the past. And are we, in return, to carry ourwretched bone off to our own miserable corner!--sharing and givingnothing? Woe to us if we do! Upon such comes indeed the "seconddeath, "--the separation final and irretrievable, as far, at anyrate, as this world is concerned, between us and the life of God!'

Lucy had dropped her work. She sat staring at him--at the shiningeyes, at the hand against the brow which shook a little, at thepaleness which went so readily in him with any expression of deepemotion. Never had he so spoken to her before; never, all theseyears. In general no one shrank more than he from 'high phrases;'no one was more anxious than he to give all philanthropic talk ashrewd business-like aspect, which might prevent questions as towhat lay beneath. 

Her heart fluttered a little. 

'David!' she broke out, 'what is it you believe? You know Dorathinks you believe nothing. '

'Does she?' he said, with evident shrinking. 'No, I don't think shedoes. '

Lucy instinctively moved her chair closer to him, and laid her headagainst his knee. 

'Yes, she does. But I don't mind about that. I just wish you'd tellme why you believe in God, when you won't go to church, and whenyou think Jesus was just--just a man. '

She drew her breath quickly. She was making a first voyage ofdiscovery in her husband's deepest mind, and she was astonished ather own venturesomeness. 

He put out a hand and touched her hair. 

'I can't read Nature and life any other way, ' he said at last, after a silence. 'There seems to me something in myself, and inother human beings, which is beyond Nature--which, instead of beingmade by Nature, is the condition of our knowing there is a Natureat all. This something--reason, consciousness, soul, call it whatyou will--unites us to the world; for everywhere in the worldreason is at home, and gradually finds itself; it makes us aware ofa great order in which we move; it breaks down the barriers ofsense between us and the absolute consciousness, the eternallife--"not ourselves, " yet in us and akin to us!--whence, if thereis any validity in human logic, that order must spring. And so, inits most perfect work, it carries us to God--it bids us claim oursonship--it gives us hope of immortality!'

His voice had the vibrating intensity of prayer. Lucy hardlyunderstood what he said at all, but the tears came into her eyes asshe sat hiding them against his knee. 

'But what makes you think God is good--that He cares anything aboutus?' she said softly. 

'Well--I look back on human life, and I ask what reason--which isthe Divine Life communicated to us, striving to fulfil itself inus--has done, what light it throws upon its "great Original. " Andthen I see that it has gradually expressed itself in law, inknowledge, in love; that it has gradually learnt, under thepressure of something which is itself and not itself, that to begained life must be lost; that beauty, truth, love, are therealities which abide. Goodness has slowly proved itself in theworld, --is every day proving itself, --like a light broadening indarkness!--to be that to which reason tends, in which it realisesitself. And, if so, goodness here, imperfect and struggling as wesee it always, must be the mere shadow and hint of that goodnesswhich is in God!--and the utmost we can conceive of humantenderness, holiness, truth, though it tell us all we know, can yetsuggest to us only the minutest fraction of what must be the Divinetenderness, --holiness, --truth. '

There was a silence. 

'But this, ' he added after a bit, 'is not to be proved by argument, though argument is necessary and inevitable, the mind being what itis. It can only be proved by living, --by taking it into our hearts, --by every little victory we gain over the evil self. '

The fire burnt quietly beside them. Everything was still in thehouse. Nothing stirred but their own hearts. 

At last Lucy looked up quickly. 

'I am glad, ' she said with a kind of sob--'glad you think God lovesus, and, if Sandy and I were to die, you would find us again. '

Instead of answering, he bent forward quickly and kissed her. Shegave a little shrinking movement. 

'Oh! that poor cheek!' he said remorsefully; 'did I touch it? I hopeDr. Mildmay won't forget to-morrow. '

'Oh! never mind about it, ' she said, half impatiently. 'David!'

Her little thin face twitched and trembled. He was puzzled by hersudden change of expression, her agitation. 

'David!--you know--you know what Louie said. I want you to tell mewhether she--she meant anything. '

He gave a little start, then he understood perfectly. 

'My dear wife, ' he said, laying his hand on hers, which werecrossed on his knee. 

She waited breathlessly. 

'You shall know all there is to know, ' he said at last, with aneffort. 'I thought perhaps you would have questioned me directlyafter that scene, and I would have told you; but as you did not, Icould not bring myself to begin. What Louie said had to do withthings that happened a year before I asked you to be my wife. WhenI spoke to you, they were dead and gone. The girl herself--wasmarried. It was her story as well as my own, and it seemed toconcern no one else in the world--not even you, dear. So I thoughtthen, any way. Since, I have often wondered whether I was right. '

'Was it when you were in Paris?' she asked sharply. 

He gave a sign of assent. 

'I thought so!' she cried, drawing her breath. 'I always said therewas more than being ill. I said so to Dora. Well, tell me--tell meat once! What was she like? Was she young, and good-looking?'

He could not help smiling at her--there was something so childishin her jealous curiosity. 

'Let me tell you in order, ' he said, 'and then we will both put itout of sight--at least, till I see Louie again. '

His heavy sigh puzzled her. But her strained and eager eyessummoned him to begin. 

He told her everything, with singular simplicity and frankness. ToLucy it was indeed a critical and searching moment! No wife, whatever stuff she may be made of, can listen to such a story forthe first time, from the husband she loves and respects, withoutpassing thereafter into a new state of consciousness towards him. Sometimes she could hardly realise at all that it applied to David, this tale of passion he was putting, with averted face, into theseshort and sharp sentences. That conception of him which the dailylife of eight years, with its growing self-surrender, its expandingspiritual force, had graven on her mind, clashed so oddly with allthat he was saying! A certain desolate feeling, too large and deepin all its issues to be harboured long in her slight nature, cameover her now and then. She had been so near to him all these years, and had yet known nothing. It was the separateness of theindividual lot--that awful and mysterious chasm which divides evenlover from lover--which touched her here and there like a coldhand, from which she shrank. 

She grew a little cold and pale when he spoke of his weeks ofdespair, of the death from which Ancrum had rescued him. But anyordinary prudish word of blame, even for his silence towards her, never occurred to her. Once she asked him a wistful question:--

'You and she thought that marrying didn't matter at all when peopleloved each other--that nobody had a right to interfere? Do youthink that now, David?'

'No, ' he said, with deep emphasis. 'No. --I have come to think themost disappointing and hopeless marriage, nobly borne, to be betterworth having than what people call an "ideal passion, "--if theideal passion must be enjoyed at the expense of one of thosefundamental rules which poor human nature has worked out, with suchinfinite difficulty and pain, for the protection and help of itsown weakness. I did not know it, --but, so far as in me lay, I wasbetraying and injuring that society which has given me all I have. '

She sat silent. 'The most disappointing marriage. ' An echo from thatoverheard talk at Benet's Park floated through her mind. Shewinced, and shrank, even as she realised his perfect innocence ofany such reference. 

Then, with eagerness, she threw herself into innumerable questionsabout Elise--her looks, her motives, the details of what she saidand did. Beneath the satisfaction of her curiosity, of course, there was all the time a pang--a pang not to be silenced. In herflights of idle fancy she had often suspected something not unlikethe truth, basing her conjecture on the mystery which had alwayshung round that Paris visit, partly on the world's generalexperience of what happened to handsome young men. For, in herheart of hearts, had there not lurked all the time a wonder whichwas partly self-judgment? Had David, with such a temperament, neverbeen more deeply moved than she knew herself to have moved him?More than once a secret inarticulate suspicion of this kind hadcrossed her. The poorest and shallowest soul may have these flashesof sad insight, under the kindling of its affections. 

But now she knew, and the difference was vast. After she had askedall her questions, and delivered a vehement protest against thetenacity of his self-reproach with regard to Louie--for what decentgirl need go wrong unless she has a mind to?--she laid her headdown again on David's knee. 

'I don't think she cared much about you--I'm sure she couldn'thave, ' she said slowly, finding a certain pleasure in the words. 

David did not answer. He was sunk in memory. How far away lay thatworld of art and the artist from this dusty, practical life inwhich he was now immersed! At no time had he been really akin toit. The only art to which he was naturally susceptible was the artof oratory and poetry. Elise had created in him an artificialtaste, which had died with his passion. Yet now, as his quickenedmind lingered in the past, he felt a certain wide philosophicregret for the complete divorce which had come about between himand so rich a section of human experience. 

He was roused from his reverie, which would have reassured her, could she have followed it, more than any direct speech, by amovement from Lucy. Dropping the hand which had once more stolenover his brow, he saw her looking at him with wide, wet eyes. 

'David!'

'Yes. '

'Come here! close to me!'

He moved forward, and laid his arm round her shoulders, as she satin her low chair beside him. 

'What is it, dear? I have been keeping you up too late. '

She lifted a hand, and brought his face near to hers. 

'David, I am a stupid little thing--but I do understand more than Idid, and I would never, _never_ desert you for anything, --forany sorrow or trouble in the world!'

The mixture of yearning, pain, triumphant affection in her tone, cannot be rendered in words. 

His whole heart melted to her. As he held her to his breast, thehour they had just passed through took for both of them a sacredmeaning and importance. Youth was going--their talk had not beenthe talk of youth. Was true love just beginning?

CHAPTER VIII

'_My God! My God!_'

The cry was David's. He had reeled back against the table in hisstudy, his hand upon an open book, his face turned to DoctorMildmay, who was standing by the fireplace. 

'Of course, I can't be sure, ' said the doctor hastily, almostguiltily. 'You must not take it upon my authority alone. Try andthrow it off your mind. Take your wife up to town to see Selby orPaget, and if I am wrong I shall be too thankful! And, above all, don't frighten her. Take care--she will be down again directly. '

'You say, ' said David, thickly, 'that if it were what you suspect, operation would be difficult. Yes, I see there is something of thesort here. '

He turned, shaking all over, to the book beside him, which was amedical treatise he had just taken down from his scientificbookcase. 

'It would be certainly difficult, ' said the doctor, frowning, hislower lip pushed forward in a stress of thought, 'but it would haveto be attempted. Only, on the temporal bone it will be a puzzle togo deep enough. '

David's eye ran along the page beside him. 'Sarcoma, which wasoriginally regarded with far less terror than cancer (carcinoma), is now generally held by doctors to be more malignant and moredeadly. There is much less pain, but surgery can do less, and deathis in most cases infinitely more rapid. '

'Hush!' said the doctor, with short decision, 'I hear her comingdown again. Let me speak. '

Lucy, who had run upstairs to quiet a yell of crying from Sandyimmediately after Doctor Mildmay had finished his examination ofher swollen cheek, opened the door as he spoke. She was slightlyflushed, and her eyes were more wide open and restless than usual. David was apparently bending over a drawer which he had opened onthe farther side of his writing-table. The doctor's face wasentirely as usual. 

'Well now, Mrs. Grieve, ' he said cheerily, 'we have beenagreeing--your husband and I--that it will be best for you to go upto London and have that cheek looked at by one of the cracksurgeons. They will give you the best advice as to what to do withit. It is not a common ailment, and we are very fine fellows downhere, but of course we can't get the experience, in a particularline of cases, of one of the first-rate surgical specialists. Doyou think you could go to-morrow? I could make an appointment foryou by telegraph to-day. '

Lucy gave a little unsteady, affected laugh. 

'I don't see how I can go all in a moment like that, ' she said. 'Itdoesn't matter! Why don't you give me something for it, and it willgo away. '

'Oh! but it does matter, ' said the doctor, firmly. 'Lumps like thatare serious things, and mustn't be trifled with. '

'But what will they want to do to it?' said Lucy nervously. She wasstanding with one long, thin hand resting lightly on the back of achair, looking from David, whose face and figure were blurred toher by the dazzle of afternoon light coming in through the window, to Doctor Mildmay. 

The doctor cleared his throat. 

'They would only want to do what was best for you in every way, ' hesaid; 'you may be sure of that. Could you be very brave if theyadvised you that it ought to be removed?'

She gave a little shriek. 

'What! you mean cut it out--cut it away!' she cried, shaking, andlooking at him with the frowning anger of a child. 'Why, it wouldleave an ugly mark, a hideous mark!'

'No, it wouldn't. The mark would disfigure you much less than theswelling. They would take care to draw the skin together againneatly, and you could easily arrange your hair a little. But youought to get a first-rate opinion. '

'What is it? what do you call it?' said Lucy, irritably. 'I can'tthink why you make such a fuss. '

'Well, it might be various things, ' he said evasively. 'Any way, youtake my advice, and have it seen to. I can telegraph as I go fromhere. '

'I could take you up to-morrow, ' said David, coming forward inanswer to the disturbed look she threw him. Now that her flush hadfaded, how pale and drooping she was in the strong light! 'It wouldbe better, dear, to do what Doctor Mildmay recommends. And younever mind a day in London, you know. '

Did she detect any difference in the voice? She moved up to him, and he put his arm round her. 

'Must I?' she said, helplessly; 'it's such a bore, to-morrowparticularly. I had promised to take Sandy out to tea. '

'Well, let that young man go without a treat for once, ' said thedoctor, laughing. 'He has a deal too many, anyway. Very well, that'ssettled. I will telegraph as I go to the train. Just come here amoment, Grieve. '

The two went out together. When David returned, any one who hadhappened to be in the hall would have seen that he could hardlyopen the sitting-room door, so fumbling were his movements. As hepassed through the room to reach the study he caught sight of hisown face in a glass, and stopping, with clenched hands, pulledhimself together by the effort of his whole being. 

When he opened the study-door, Lucy was hunting about his table ina quick, impatient way. 

'I can't think where you keep your india-rubber rings, David. I wantto put one round a parcel for Dora. '

He found one for her. Then she stood by the fire, as thesunset-light faded into dusk, and poured out to him a story ofdomestic grievances. Sarah, their cook, wished to leave and bemarried--it was very unexpected and very inconsiderate, and Lucydid not believe the young man was steady; and how on earth was sheto find another cook? It was enough to drive one wild, thedifficulty of getting cooks in Manchester. 

For nearly an hour, till the supper-bell rang, she stood there, with her foot on the fender, chattering in a somewhat sharp, shrillway. Not one word would she say, or let him say, of London or thedoctor's visit. 

After supper, as they went back into the study, David looked forthe railway-guide. 'The 10. 15 will do, ' he said. 'Mildmay has madethe appointment for three. We can just get up in time. '

'It is great nonsense!' said Lucy, pouting. 'The question is, can weget back? I must get back. I don't want to leave Sandy for thenight. He's got a cold. '

It seemed to David that something clutched at his breath and voice. Was it he or some one else that said:--

'That will be too tiring, dear. We shall have to stay the night. '

'No, I must get back, ' said Lucy, obstinately. 

Afterwards she brought her work as usual, and he professed to smokeand read. But the evening passed, for him, beneath his outwardquiet, in a hideous whirl of images and sensations, whichultimately wore itself out, and led to a mood of dulness andnumbness. Every now and then, as he sat there, with the firecrackling, and the familiar walls and books about him, he felthimself sinking, as it were, in a sudden abyss of horror; then, again, the scene of the afternoon seemed to him absurd, and hedespised his own panic. He dwelt upon everything the doctor hadsaid about the rarity, the exceptional nature of such an illness. Well, what is rare does not happen--not to oneself--that was whathe seemed to be clinging to at last. 

When Lucy went up to bed, he followed her in about a quarter of anhour. 

'Why, you are early!' she said, opening her eyes. 

'I am tired, ' he said. 'There was a great press of work to-day. Iwant a long night. '

In reality, he could not bear her out of his sight. Hour after hourhe tossed restlessly, beside her quiet sleep, till the springmorning broke. 

They left Manchester next morning in a bitter east wind. As shepassed through the hall to the cab, Lucy left a little note forDora on the table, with instructions that it should be posted. 

'I want her to come and see him at his bedtime, ' she said, 'for ofcourse we can't get back for that. '

David said nothing. When they got to the station, he dared not evenpropose to her the extra comfort of first class, lest he shouldintensify the alarm he perfectly well divined under her offhand, flighty manner. 

By three o'clock they were in the waiting-room of the famous doctorthey had come to see. Lucy looked round her nervously as theyentered, with quick, dilating nostrils, and across David thereswept a sudden choking memory of the trapped and fluttering birdshe had sometimes seen in his boyhood struggling beneath abirdcatcher's net on the moors. 

As the appointment was at an unusual time, they were not keptwaiting very long by the great man. He received them with a sort ofkindly distance, made his examination very quickly, and asked her anumber of general questions, entering the answers in his largepatients' book. 

Then he leant back in his chair, looking thoughtfully at Lucy overhis spectacles. 

'Well, ' he said at last, with a perfectly cheerful and businesslikevoice, 'I am quite clear there is only one thing to be done, Mrs. Grieve. You must have that growth removed. '

Lucy flushed. 

'I want you to give me something to take it away, ' she said, halfsullenly, half defiantly. She was sitting very erect, in a littletight-fitting black jacket, with her small black hat and veil onher knee. 

'No, I am sorry to say nothing can be done in that way. If you weremy daughter or sister, I should say to you, have that lump removedwithout a day's, an hour's unnecessary delay. These growths are notto be trifled with. '

He spoke with a mild yet penetrating observance of her. A number ofreflections were passing rapidly through his mind. The operationwas a most unpromising one, but it was clearly the surgeon's dutyto try it. The chances were that it would prolong life which wasnow speedily and directly threatened, owing to the proximity of thegrowth to certain vital points. 

'When could you do it?' said David, so hoarsely that he had torepeat his question. He was standing with his arm on themantelpiece, looking down on the surgeon and his wife. 

The great man lifted his eyebrows, and looked at hisengagement-book attentively. 

'I _could_ do it to-morrow, ' he said at last; 'and the sooner, the better. Have you got lodgings? or can I help you? And--'

Then he stopped, and looked at Lucy. 'Let me settle things with yourhusband, Mrs. Grieve, ' he said, with a kindly smile. 'You look tiredafter your journey. You will find a fire and some newspapers in thewaiting-room. '

And, with a suavity not to be gainsaid, he ushered her himselfacross the hall, and shut the waiting-room door upon her. Then hecame back to David. 

A little while after a bell rang, and the man-servant who answeredit presently took some brandy into the consulting-room. Lucymeanwhile sat, in a dazed way, looking out of window at the squaregarden, where the lilacs were already in full leaf in spite of theeast wind. 

When her husband and the doctor came in she sprang up, lookingpartly awkward, partly resentful. Why had they been discussing itall without her?

'Well, Mrs. Grieve, ' said the doctor, 'your husband is just going totake you on to see the lodgings I recommend. By good luck they arejust vacant. Then, if you like them, you know, you can settle in atonce. '

'But I haven't brought anything for the night, ' cried Lucy in aninjured voice, looking at David. 

'We will telegraph to Dora, darling, ' he said, taking up her bagand umbrella from the table; 'but now we mustn't keep Mr. Selby. Hehas to go out. '

'How long will it take?' interrupted Lucy, addressing the surgeon. 'Can I get back next day?'

'Oh no! you will have to be four or five days in town. But don'talarm yourself, Mrs. Grieve. You won't know anything at all aboutthe operation itself; your husband will look after you, and then alittle patience--and hope for the best. Now I really must be off. Good-bye to you--good-bye to you. '

And he hurried off, leaving them to find their own cab. When theygot in, Lucy said, passionately:--

'I want to go back, David. I want Sandy. I won't go to theselodgings. '

Then courage came to him. He took her hand. 

'Dear, dear wife--for my sake--for Sandy's!'

She stared at him--at his white face. 

'Shall I die?' she cried, with the same passionate tone. 

'No, no, no!' he said, kissing the quivering hand, and seeing noone but her in the world, though they were driving through thecrowd of Regent Street. 'But we must do everything Mr. Selby said. That hateful thing must be taken away--it is so near--think foryourself!--to the eye and the brain; and it might go downwards tothe throat. You will be brave, won't you? We will look after youso--Dora and I. '

Lucy sank back in the cab, with a sudden collapse of nerve andspirit. David hung over her, comforting her, one moment promisingher that in a few days she should have Sandy again, and be quitewell; the next, checked and turned to stone by the memory of theterrible possibilities freely revealed to him in his private talkwith Mr. Selby, and by the sense that he might be soothing thepresent only to make the future more awful. 

'David! she is in such fearful pain! The nurse says she must havemore morphia. They didn't give her enough. Will you run to Mr. Selby's house? You won't find him, of course--he is on hisround--but his assistant, who was with him here just now, went backthere. Run for him at once. '

It was Dora who spoke, as she closed the folding-doors of the innerroom where Lucy lay. David, who was crouching over the fire in thesitting-room, whither the nurse had banished him for a while, afterthe operation, sprang up, and disappeared in an instant. Thosefaint, distant sounds of anguish which had been in his ear for halfan hour or more, ever since the doctors had departed, declaringthat everything was satisfactorily over, had been more than hismanhood could bear. 

He returned in an incredibly short space of time with a youngsurgeon, who at once administered another injection of morphia. 

'A highly sensitive patient, ' he said to David, 'and the nerveshave, no doubt, been badly cut. But she will do now. '

And, indeed, the moaning had ceased. She lay with closed eyes--sosmall a creature in the wide bed--her head and face swathed inbandages. But the breathing was growing even and soft. She was oncemore unconscious. 

The doctor touched David's hand and went, after a word with thenurse. 

'Won't you go into the next room, sir, and have your tea? Mrs. Grieve is sure to sleep now, ' said the nurse to him in hercompassion. 

He shook his head, and sat down near the foot of the bed. The nursewent into the dressing-room a moment to speak to Dora, who wasdoing some unpacking there, and he was left alone with his wife. 

The sounds of the street came into the silent room, and every nowand then he had a start of agony, thinking that she was movingagain--that she was in pain again. But no, she slept; her breathcame gently through the childish parted lips, and the dimlight--for the nurse had drawn the curtains on the lengtheningApril day--hid her pallor and the ghastliness of the dressings. 

Forty-eight hours ago, and they were in the garden with Sandy! Andnow life seemed to have passed for ever into this half-light ofmisery. Everything had dropped away from him--the interests of hisbusiness, his books, his social projects. He and she were shut outfrom the living world. Would she ever rise from that bedagain--ever look at him with the old look?

He sat on there, hour after hour, till Dora coaxed him into thesitting-room for a while, and tried to make him take some food. Buthe could not touch it, and how the sudden gas which the servant litglared on his sunken eyes! He waited on his companion mechanically, then sat, with his head on his hand, listening for the sound of thedoctors' steps. 

When they came, they hardly disturbed their patient. She moaned atbeing touched; but everything was right, and the violent pain whichhad unexpectedly followed the operation was not likely to recur. 

'And what a blessing that she took the chloroform so well, withhardly any after-effects!' said Mr. Selby cheerily, drawing on hisgloves in the sitting-room. 'Well, Mr. Grieve, you have got a goodnurse, and can leave your wife to her with perfect peace of mind. You must sleep, or you will knock up; let me give you a sleepingdraught. '

'Oh! I shall sleep, ' said David, impatiently. 'You considered theoperation successful--completely successful?'

The surgeon looked gravely into the fire. 

'I shall know more in a week or so, ' he said. 'I have neverdisguised from you, Mr. Grieve, how serious and difficult the casewas. Still, we have done what was right--we can but wait for theissue. '

An hour later Dora looked into the sitting-room, and said softly:--

'She would like to see you, David. '

He went in, holding his breath. There was a night-light in the room, and her face was lying in deep shadow. 

He knelt down beside her, and kissed her hand. 

'My darling!' he said--and his voice was quite firm andsteady--'are you easier now?'

'Yes, ' she said faintly. 'Where are you going to sleep?'

'In a room just beyond Dora's room. She could make me hear in amoment if you wanted me. '

Then, as he looked closer, he saw that about her head was thrownthe broad white lace scarf she had worn round her neck on thejourney up. And as he bent to her, she suddenly opened her languideyes, and gazed at him full. For the moment it was as though shewere given back to him. 

'I made Dora put it on, ' she said feebly, moving her hand towardsthe lace. 'Does it hide all those nasty bandages?'

'Yes. I can't see them at all. '

'Is it pretty?'

The little gleam of a smile nearly broke down his self-command. 

'Very, ' he said, with a quivering lip. 

She closed her eyes again. 

'Oh! I hope Lizzie will look after Sandy, ' she said after a while, with a long sigh. 

Not a word now of wilfulness, of self-assertion! After thesullenness and revolt of the day before, which had lastedintermittently almost up to the coming of the doctors, nothingcould be more speaking, more pathetic, than this helplessacquiescence. 

'I mustn't stay with you, ' he said. 'You ought to be going to sleepagain. Nurse will give you something if you can't. '

'I'm quite comfortable, ' she said, sleepily. 'There isn't any pain. '

And she seemed to pass quickly and easily into sleep as he satlooking at her. 

An hour or two later, Dora, who could not sleep from the effects offatigue and emotion, was lying in her uncomfortable stretcher-bed, thinking with a sort of incredulity of all that had passed sinceDavid's telegram had reached her the day before, or puzzlingherself to know how her employers could possibly spare her foranother three or four days' holiday, when she was startled by somerecurrent sounds from the room beyond her own. David was sleepingthere, and Dora, with her woman's quickness, had at once perceivedthat the partition between them was very thin, and had been asstill as a mouse in going to bed. 

The sound alarmed her, though she could not make it out. Instinctively she put her ear to the wall. After a minute or twoshe hastily moved away, and hiding her head under the bedclothes, fell to soft crying and praying. 

For it was the deep rending sound of suppressed weeping, theweeping of a strong man who believes himself alone with his griefand with God. That she should have heard it at all filled her witha sort of shame. 

Things, however, looked much brighter on the following morning. Thewound caused by the operation was naturally sore and stiff, and thedressing was painful; but when the doctor's visit was over, andLucy was lying in the halo of her white scarf on her fresh pillows, in a room which Dora and the nurse had made daintily neat andstraight, her own cheerfulness was astonishing. She made Dora goout and get her some patterns for Sandy's summer suits, and whenthey came she lay turning them over from time to time, or weaklytwisting first one and then another round her finger. She was, ofcourse, perpetually anxious to know when she would be well, andwhether the scar would be very bad; but on the whole she was adocile and promising patient, and she even began to see some gleamsof virtue in Mr. Selby, for whom at first she had taken thestrongest dislike. 

Meanwhile, David, haunted always by a horrible knowledge which washid from her, could get nothing decided for the future out of thedoctors. 

'We must wait, ' said Mr. Selby; 'for the present all is healingwell, but I wish we could get up her general strength. It must havebeen running down badly of late. '

Whereupon David was left reproaching himself for blindnessand neglect, the real truth being that, with any one of Lucy'sthin elastic frame and restless temperament, a good deal ofhealth-degeneration may go on without its becoming conspicuous. 

A few days passed. Dora was forced to go back to work; but as shewas to take up her quarters at the Merton Road house, and to writelong accounts of Sandy to his mother every day, Lucy saw her departwith considerable equanimity. Dora left her patient on the sofa, awhite and ghostly figure, but already talking eagerly of returningto Manchester in a week. When she heard the cab roll off, Lucy layback on her cushions and counted the minutes till David should comein from the British Museum, whither, because of her improvement, hehad gone to clear up one or two bibliographical points. Shecaressed the thought of being left alone with him, except for thenurse--left to that tender and special care he was bestowing on herso richly, and through which she seemed to hold and know himafresh. 

When he came in she reproached him for being late, and both enjoyedand scouted his pleas in answer. 

'Well, I don't care, ' she said obstinately; 'I wanted you. '

Then she heaved a long sigh. 

'David, I made nurse let me look at the horrid place this morning. I shall always be a fright--it's no good. '

But he knew her well enough to perceive that she was not reallyvery downcast, and that she had already devised ways and means ofhiding the mark as much as possible. 

'It doesn't hurt or trouble you at all?' he asked her anxiously. 

'No, of course not, ' she said impatiently. 'It's getting well. Doask nurse to bring me my tea. '

The nurse brought it, and she and David spoiled their invalid withsmall attentions. 

'It's nice being waited on, ' said Lucy when it was over, settlingherself to rest with a little sigh of sensuous satisfaction. 

Another week passed, and all seemed to be doing well, though Mr. Selby would say nothing as yet of allowing her to move. Then came anight when she was restless; and in the morning the wound troubledher, and she was extremely irritable and depressed. The moment thenurse gave him the news at his door in the early morning, David'sface changed. He dressed, and went off for Mr. Selby, who came atonce. 

'Yes, ' he said gravely, after his visit, as he shut thefolding-doors of Lucy's room behind him--'yes, I am sorry to saythere is a return. Now the question is, what to do. '

He came and stood by the fireplace, legs apart, head down, debatingwith himself. David, haggard and unshorn, watched him helplessly. 

'We could operate again, ' he said thoughtfully, 'but it would cuther about terribly. And I can't disguise from you, Mr. Grieve'--ashe raised his head and caught sight of his companion his tonesoftened insensibly--'that, in my opinion, it would be all butuseless. I more than suspect, from my observation to-day, thatthere are already secondary growths in the lung. Probably they havebeen there for some time. '

There was a silence. 

'Then we can do nothing, ' said David. 

'Nothing effectual, alas!' said the doctor, slowly. 'Palliatives, ofcourse, we can use, of many kinds. But there will not be much pain. '

'Will it be long?'

David was standing with his back to the doctor, looking out ofwindow, and Mr. Selby only just heard the words. 

'I fear it will be a rapid case, ' he said reluctantly. 'This returnis rapid, and there are many indications this morning I don't like. But don't wish it prolonged, my dear sir!--have courage for her andyourself. '

The words were not mere platitudes--the soul of a good man lookedfrom the clear and masterful eyes. He described the directions hehad left with the nurse, and promised to come again in the evening. Then he grasped David's hand, and would have gone away quickly. ButDavid, following him mechanically to the door, suddenly recollectedhimself. 

'Could we move her?' he asked; 'she may crave to get home, or tosome warm place. '

'Yes, you can move her, ' the doctor said, decidedly. 'With aninvalid-carriage and a nurse you can do it. We will talk about itwhen I come again to-night. '

'A ghastly case, ' he was saying to himself as he went downstairs, 'and, thank heaven! a rare one. Strange and mysterious thing it is, with its ghoulish preference for the young. Poor thing! poor thing!and yesterday she was so cheerful--she would tell me all about herboy. '

CHAPTER IX

The history of the weeks that followed shall be partly told inDavid's own words, gathered from those odds-and-ends of paper, oldenvelopes, the half-sheets of letters, on which he would writesometimes in those hours when he was necessarily apart from Lucy, thrusting them on his return between the leaves of his lockedjournal, clinging to them as the only possible record of his wife'sebbing life, yet passionately avoiding the sight of them when theywere once written. 

'RYDAL, AMBLESIDE: _May 5th_--We arrived this afternoon. Theday has been glorious. The mountains round the head of the lake, aswe drove along it at a foot's pace that the carriage might notshake her, stood out in the sun; the light wind drove thecloud-shadows across their blues and purples; the water was a sheetof light; the larches were all out, though other trees are late;and every breath was perfume. 

'But she was too weary to look at it; and before we had gone twomiles, it seemed to me that I could think of nothing but thehateful length of the drive, and the ups and downs of the road. 

'When we arrived, she would walk into the cottage, and beforenurse or I realised what she was doing, she went straight throughthe little passage which runs from front to back, out into thegarden. She stood a moment--in her shawls, with the little whitehood she has devised for herself drawn close round her head andface--looking at the river with its rocks and foaming water, at theshoulder of Nab Scar above the trees, at the stone house with thered blinds opposite. 

'"It looks just the same, " she said, and the tears rolled down hercheeks. 

'We brought her in--nurse and I--and when she had been putcomfortably on the low couch I had sent from London beforehand, andhad taken some food, she was a little cheered. She made us draw herto the window of the little back sitting-room, and she lay lookingout till it was almost dark. But as I foresaw, the pain of comingis more than equal to any pleasure there may be. 

'Yet she would come. During those last days in London, when shewould hardly speak to us, when she lay in the dark in that awfulroom all day, and every attempt to feed her or comfort her made herangry, I could not, for a long time, get her to say what she wishedabout moving, except that she would not go back to Manchester. 

'Her hand-glass could not be kept from her, and one morning shecried bitterly when she saw that she could no longer so arrange herlaces as to completely hide the disfigurement of the right side ofthe face. 

'"No! I will _never_ go back to Merton Road!" she cried, throwing down the glass; "no one shall see me!"

'But at night, after I hoped she was asleep, she sent nurse to saythat she wanted to go to--_Rydal!_--to the same cottage by theRotha we had stayed at on our honeymoon. Nurse said she could--shecould have an invalid-carriage from door to door. Would I write forthe rooms at once? And Sandy could join us there. 

'So, after nine years, we are here again. The house is empty. Wehave our old rooms. Nothing is changed in the valley. After she wasasleep, I went out along the river, keeping to a tiny path on thesteep right bank till I reached a wooden bridge, and then through agreen bit, fragrant with fast-springing grass and flowers, to thatpoint beside the lake I remember so well. I left her there one day, sitting, and dabbling in the water, while I ran up Loughrigg. Shewas nineteen. How she tripped over the hills!

'To-night there was a faint moon. The air was cold, but quitestill, and the reflections, both of the islands and of Nab Scar, seemed to sink into unfathomed depths of shadowy water. Loughriggrose boldly to my left against the night sky; I could see therifle-butts and the soft blackness of the great larch-plantation onthe side of Silver How. 

'There, to my right, was the tower of the little church, whitishagainst the woods, and close beside it, amid the trees, I felt thepresence of Wordsworth's house, though I could not see it. 

'O Poet! who wrote for me, not knowing--oh, heavenly valley!--youhave but one voice; it haunts my ears:--

 _'Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed, The bowers where Lucy played; And thine, too, is the last green field That Lucy's eyes surveyed. _'

'_May 10th_. --She never speaks of dying, and I dare notspeak of it. But sometimes she is like a soul wandering in terrorthrough a place of phantoms. Her eyes grow large and strained, shepushes me away from her. And she often wakes at night, sinking inblack gulfs of fear, from which I cannot save her. 

'Oh, my God! my heart is torn, my life is sickened with pity! Giveme some power to comfort--take from me this impotence, thisnumbness. She, so little practised in suffering, so much ofa child still, called to bear this _monstrous_ thing. Savage, incredible Nature! But behind Nature there is God--

'To-night she asked me to pray with her--asked it with reproach. "You never say good things to me now!" And I could not explainmyself. 

'It was in this way. When Dora was with her, she used to read andpray with her. I would not have interfered for the world. When Doraleft, I thought she would use the little manual of prayers for thesick that Dora had left behind; the nurse, who is a religiouswoman, and reads to her a good deal, would have read this whenevershe wished. One night I offered to read it to her myself, but shewould not let me. And for the rest--in spite of our last talk--Iwas so afraid of jarring her, of weakening any thought that mighthave sustained her. 'But to-night she asked me, and for the firsttime since our earliest married life I took her hand and prayed. Afterwards she lay still, till suddenly her lip began to quiver. '"I wasn't ever so very bad. I did love you and Sandy, and I did helpthat girl, --you know--that Dora knew, who went wrong. And I am soill--SO ill!"'

'MAY 20TH. --A fortnight has passed. Sandy and his nurse are lodgingat a house on the hill; every morning he comes down here, and Itake him for a walk. He was very puzzled and grave at first when hesaw her, but now he has grown used to her look, and he playsmerrily about among the moss-grown rocks beside the river, whileshe lies in the slung couch, to which nurse and I carry her on alittle stretcher, watching him. 'There was a bright hour thismorning. We are in the midst of a spell of dry and beautifulweather, such as often visits this rainy country in the earlysummer, before any visitors come. The rhododendrons and azaleas arecoming out in the gardens under Loughrigg--some little copses hereand there are sheets of blue--and the green is rushing over thevalley. We had put her among the rocks under a sycamore-tree--asingularly beautiful tree, with two straight stems dividing itsrounded masses of young leaf. There were two wagtails perching onthe stones in the river, and swinging their long tails; and thelight flickered through the trees on to the water foaming round thestones or slipping in brown cool sheets between them. There was ahawthorn-tree in bloom near by; in the garden of the house oppositea woman was hanging out some clothes to dry; the Grasmere coachpassed with a clatter, and Sandy with the two children from thelodgings ran out to the bridge to look at it. 'Yes, she had a momentof enjoyment! I bind the thought of it to my heart. Lizzie wassitting sewing near the edge of the river, that she might lookafter Sandy. He was told not to climb on to the stones in thecurrent of the stream, but as he was bent on catching the vain, provoking wagtails who strutted about on them, the prohibition wasunendurable. As soon as Lizzie's head was bent over her work, hewould clamber in and out till he reached some quite forbidden rock;and then, looking back with dancing eyes and the tip of his littletongue showing between his white teeth, he would say, "Go on withyour work, Nana, DARLING!"--And his mother's look never left himall the time. 'Once he had been digging with his little spade amongthe fine grey gravel silted up here and there among the hollows ofthe rocks. He had been digging with great energy, and for May theair was hot. Lizzie looked up and said to him, "Sandy, it's timefor me to take you to bed"--that is, for his midday sleep. "Yes, "he said, with a languid air, sitting down on a stone with his spadebetween his knees--"yes, I think I'd better come to bed. My heartis very dreary. "

'What do you mean?'

'My heart is very dreary--dreary means tired, you know. '

'Oh, indeed!--where is your heart?'

'Here, ' he said, laying his hand lackadaisically on thesmall of his back. 

'And then she smiled, for the first time for so many, many days! Icame to sit by her; she left her hand in mine; and after the childwas gone the morning slipped by peacefully, with only the sound ofthe river and the wheels of a few passing carts to break thesilence. 

'In the afternoon she asked me if I should not have to go back toManchester. How could all those men and those big printing-roomsget on without me? I told her that John reported to me every otherday; that a batch of our best men had sent word to me, through him, that everything was going well, and I was not to worry; that therehad been a strike of some importance among the Manchestercompositors, but that our men had not joined. 

'She listened to it all, and then she shut her eyes and said:--

'"I'm glad you did that about the men. I don't understand quite--butI'm glad. "

'... You can see nothing of her face now in its white draperiesbut the small, pointed chin and nose; and then the eyes, with theircircles of pain, the high centre of the brow, and a wave or two ofher pretty hair tangled in the lace edge of the hood. 

'"_My darling, --my darling! God have mercy upon us!_"'

'_June 2nd. --"For the hardness of your hearts he wrote you thiscommandment. _" How profoundly must he who spoke the thingsreported in this passage have conceived of marriage! _For thehardness of your hearts. _ Himself governed wholly by the inwardvoice, unmoved by the mere external authority of the great Mosaicname, he handles the law presented to him with a sort of sad irony. 

The words imply the presence in him of a slowly formed andpassionately held ideal. Neither sin, nor suffering, nor death cannor ought to destroy the marriage bond, once created. It is notthere for our pleasure, nor for its mere natural object, --but toform the soul. 

'The world has marched since that day, in law--still more, as itsupposes, in sentiment. But are we yet able to bear such a saying?

'... Then compare with these words the magnificent outburst inwhich, a little earlier, he sweeps from his path his mother and hisbrethren. There are plentiful signs--take the "corban" passage, forinstance, still more, the details of the Prodigal Son--of the samedeep and tender thinking as we find in the most authentic sayingsabout marriage applied to the parental and brotherly relation. Buthe himself, realising, as it would seem, with peculiar poignancy, the sacredness of marriage and the claim of the family, is yetalone, and must be alone to the end. The fabric of the Kingdomrises before him; his soul burns in the fire of his message; andthe lost sheep call. 

'She has been fairly at ease this afternoon, and I have been lyingon the grass by the lake, pondering these things. The narrative ofMark, full as it is already of legendary accretion, brings one soclose to him; the living breath and tone are in one's ears. '

'_June 4th_. --These last two days she is much worse. Thelocal trouble is stationary; but there must be developments we knownothing of elsewhere. For she perishes every day before oureyes--we cannot give her sleep--there is such malaise, emaciation, weariness. 

'She is wonderfully patient. It seems to me, looking back, that afew days ago came a change. I cannot remember any words that markedit, but it is as though--without our knowing it--her eyes hadturned themselves irrevocably from us and from life, to the hillsof death. Yet--strange!--she takes more notice of those about her. 

Yesterday she showed an interest just like her old self in thechildren's going to a little fete at Ambleside. She would have themall in--Sandy and the landlady's two little girls--to look at themwhen they were dressed. --What strikes me with awe is that she hasno more tears, though she says every now and then the most touchingthings--things that pierce to the very marrow. 

'She told me to-day that she wished to see her father. I havewritten to him this evening. '

'_June 6th_. --Purcell has been here a few hours, and has goneback to-night. She received him with perfect calmness, though theyhave not spoken to each other for ten years. He came in with hiserect, military port and heavy tread, looking little older, thoughhis hair is gray. But he blenched at sight of her. 

'"You must kiss me on the forehead, " she said to him feebly, "but, please, very gently. "

'So he kissed her, and sat down. He cleared his throat often, anddid not know what to say. But she asked him, by degrees, about someof her mother's relations whom she had not seen for long, thenabout himself and his health. The ice thawed, but the talk wasdifficult. Towards the end he inquired of her--and, I think, withgenuine feeling--whether she had "sought salvation. " She saidfaintly, "No;" and he, looking shocked and shaken, bade her, withvery much of his old voice and manner, and all the old phraseology, "lay hold of the merits of Jesus. "

'Towards the end of his exhortations she interrupted him. 

'"You must see Sandy, and you must kiss me again. I wasn't a gooddaughter. But, oh! why wouldn't you make friends with me and David?I tried--you remember I tried?"

'"I am ready to forgive all the past, " he said, drawing himselfup: "I can say no more. "

'"Well, kiss me!" she said, in a melancholy whisper. And he kissedher again. 

'Then I would not let him exhaust her any more, or take any setfarewell. I hurried him away as though for tea, and nurse and Ipronounced against his seeing her again. 

'On our walk to the coach he broke out once more, and implored me, with much unction and some dignity, not to let my infidel opinionsstand in the way, but to summon some godly man to see and talk withher. I said that a neighbouring clergyman had been several times tosee her, since, as he probably knew, she had been a Churchwoman foryears. In my inward frenzy I seemed to be hurling all sorts of wildsayings at his head; but I don't believe they came to speech, for Iknow at the end we parted with the civility of strangers. Ipromised to send him news. What amazed me was his endless curiosityabout the details of her illness. He would have the whole historyof the operation, and all the medical opinion she could rememberfrom the nurse. And on our walk he renewed the subject; but I couldbear it no more. 

'Oh, my God! what does it matter to me _why_ she is dying?'

'Then, when I got home, I found her rather excited, and shewhispered to me: "He asked me if I had sought salvation, andI said No. I didn't seek it, David; but it comes--when you arehere. " Then her chest heaved, but with that strange instinct ofself-preservation she would not say a word more, nor would she letme weep. She asked me to hold her hands in mine, and so she slept alittle. 

'Dora writes that in a fortnight more she can get a holiday of aweek or two. Will she be in time?

'It is two months to-day since we went to London. '

On one of the last days in June Dora arrived. It seemed to her thatLucy could have but a few days to live. Working both outwardly andinwardly, the terrible disease had all but done its work. She hadnearly lost the power of swallowing, and lived mainly on themorphia injections which were regularly administered to her. But atintervals she spoke a good deal, and quite clearly. 

And Dora had not been six hours with her before a curious thinghappened. The relation which, ever since their meeting as girls, had prevailed between her and Lucy, seemed to be suddenly reversed. She was no longer the teacher and sustainer; in the little dyingcreature there was now a remote and heavenly power; it could not bedescribed, but Dora yielded with tears to the awe and sovereigntyof it. 

She saw with some plainness, however, that it depended on therelation between the husband and wife. Since she had been with themlast, it had been touched--this relation--by a Divine alchemy. Theself in both seemed to have dropped away. The two lives were nolonger two, but one--he cherishing, she leaning. 

The night she came she pressed Lucy to take the Holy Communion. Lucy assented, and the Communion was administered, with Davidkneeling beside her pillow. But afterwards Lucy was troubled, andwhen Dora proposed at night to read and pray with her, she saidfaintly, 'No; David does. ' And thenceforward, though she was allgentleness, Dora did not find it very easy to get religious speechwith her, and went often--poor Dora!--sadly, and in fear. 

Dora had been in the house five days, when new trouble followed onthe old. David one morning received a letter from Louie, forwardedfrom Manchester, and when Dora followed him into the garden with amessage, she found him walking about distracted. 

'Read it!' he said. 

The letter was but a few scrawled lines:--

'Cecile has got diphtheria. Our doctor says so, but he is a devil. Imust have another--the best--and there is no money. If she dies, you will never see me again, I swear. I dare say you will think ita good job, but now you know. '

The writing was hardly legible, and the paper had been twisted andcrumpled by the haste of the writer. 

'What is to be done?' said David, in pale despair. 'Can I leave thishouse one hour?--one minute?'

Then a sudden thought struck him. He looked at Dora with a flash ofappeal. 

'Dora, you have been our friend always, and you have been good toLouie. Will you go? I need not say all shall be made easy. I couldget John to take you over. He has been several times to Paris forme this last five years, and would be a help. '

That was indeed a struggle for Dora! Her heart clung to thesepeople she loved, and the devote in her yearned for those lastopportunities with the dying, on the hope of which she still fedherself. To go from this deathbed, to that fierce mother, in thosehorrible surroundings!

But just as she had taught Louie in the old days because DavidGrieve asked her, so now she went, in the end, because he askedher. 

She was to be away six days at least. But the doctor thought itpossible she might return to find Lucy alive. David made everypossible arrangement--telegraphed to Louie that she was coming; andto John directing him to meet her at Warrington and take her on;wrote out the times of her journey; the address of a pension in theAvenue Friedland, kept by an English lady, to which he happened tobe able to direct her; and the name of the English lawyer in Pariswho had advised him at the time of Louie's marriage, had donevarious things for him since, and would, he knew, be a friend inneed. 

Twelve hours after the arrival of Louie's letter, Dora tore herselffrom Lucy. 'Don't say good-bye, ' said David, his face working, andto spare him and Lucy she went as though she were just going acrossthe road for the night. David saw her--a white and silenttraveller--into the car that was to take her on the first stage ofa journey which, apart from everything else, alarmed her provincialimagination. David's gratitude threw her into a mist of tears asshe drove off. Surely, of all the self-devoted acts of Dora's life, this mission and this leave-taking were not the least!

Lucy heard the wheels roll away. A stony, momentary sense ofdesolation came over her as this one more strand was cut. But Davidcame in, and the locked lips relaxed. It had been necessary to tellher the reason of Dora's departure. And in the course of the longJune evening David gathered from the motion of her face that shewished to speak to him. He bent down to her, and she murmured:--

'Tell Louie I wished I'd been kinder--I pray God will let her keepCecile.... She must come to Manchester again when I'm gone. '

The night-watch was divided between David and the nurse. At fiveo'clock in the summer morning--brilliant once more after storm andrain--he injected morphia into the poor wasted arm, and she took afew drops of brandy. Then, after a while, she seemed to sleep; andhe, stretched on a sofa beside her, and confident of waking at theslightest sound, fell into a light doze. 

Lucy woke when the sun was high, rather more than an hour later. Her eyes were teased by a chink in the curtain; she hardly knewwhat it was, but her dying sense shrank, and she vaguely thought ofcalling David. But as she lay, propped up, she looked down on him, and she saw his pale, sunken face, with the momentary softening ofrest upon it. And there wandered through her mind fragments of hissayings to her in that last evening of theirs together in theManchester house, --especially, '_It can only be proved byliving--by every victory over the evil self_. ' In its mortalfatigue her memory soon lost hold of words and ideas; but she hadthe strength not to wake him. 

Then as she lay in what seemed to her this scorching light--inreality it was one little ray which had evaded the thick curtains--a flood of joy seemed to pour into her soul. 'I shall not livebeyond to-day, ' she thought, 'but I know now I shall see him again. '

When at last she made a faint movement, and he woke at once, he sawthat the end was very near. He thought of Dora in Paris with apang, but there was no help for it. Through that day he neverstirred from her side in the darkened room, and she sank fast. Shespoke only one connected sentence--to say with great difficulty, 'Dying is long--but--_not_--painful. ' The words woke in him astrange echo; they had been among the last words of 'Lias, hischildhood's friend. But she breathed one or two names--the landladyof the lodging-house, and the servants, especially the nurse. 

They came in on tiptoe and kissed her. She had already thanked eachone. 

Sandy was just going to bed, when David carried him in to her. Oneof her last conscious looks was for him. He was in his nightgown, with bare feet, holding his father tight round the neck, andwhimpering. They bent down to her, and he kissed her on the cheek, as David told him, 'very softly. ' Then he cried to go away from thisstill, grey mother. David gave him to the nurse and came back. 

The day passed, and the night began. The doctor in his eveningvisit said it would be a marvel if she saw the morrow. David satbeside the bed, his head bowed on the hand he held; the nurse wasin the farther corner. His whole life and hers passed before him;and in his mind there hovered perpetually the image of the potterand the wheel. He and she--the Hand so unfaltering, so divine hadbound them there, through resistance and anguish unspeakable. Andnow, for him there was only a sense of absolute surrender andsubmission, which in this hour of agony and exaltation rosesteadily into the ecstasy--ay, the _vision_ of faith! In thepitying love which had absorbed his being he had known that 'best'at last whereat his craving youth had grasped; and losing himselfwholly had found his God. 

And for her, had not her weak life become one flame of love--a cupof the Holy Grail, beating and pulsing with the Divine Life?

The dawn came. She pulled restlessly at her white wrapper--seemedto be in pain--whispered something of 'a weight. ' Then the lastchange came over her. She opened her eyes--but they saw no longer. Nature ceased to resist, and the soul had long since yieldeditself. With a meekness and piteousness of look not to be told, never to be forgotten, Lucy Grieve passed away. 

CHAPTER X

The very day after Lucy had been carried to her last rest in thatmost poetic of all graveyards which bends its grassy shape to theencircling Rotha and holds in trust the ashes of Wordsworth, DavidGrieve started for Paris. 

He had that morning received a telegram from Dora: 'Louiedisappeared. Have no clue. Can you come?' Two days before, the newsof Cecile's death from diphtheria had reached him in a letter frompoor Dora, rendered almost inarticulate by her grief for Lucy andbitter regret for her own absence from her cousin's deathbed, mingling with her pity for Louie's unfortunate child and her dreadand panic with regard to Louie herself. 

But so long as that white form lay shrouded in the cottage upperroom, he could not move--and he could scarcely feel. The telegrambroke in upon a sort of lethargy which had held him ever sinceLucy's last breath. He started at once. On the way he spent twohours at Manchester. On the table in his study there still lay themedical book he had taken down from his scientific shelf on thenight of Dr. Mildmay's visit; in Lucy's room her dresses hung asshe had left them on the doors; a red woollen cap she had beenknitting for Sandy was thrown down half finished on thedressing-table. Of the hour he spent in that room, putting awaysome of the little personal possessions, still warm as it were fromher touch, let no more be said. 

When he reached Paris he inquired for Dora at the _pension_ inthe Avenue Friedland, to which he had sent her. John, who had alsowritten to him, and was still in Paris, was staying, he knew, at anhotel on the Quai Voltaire. But he went to Dora first. 

Dora, however, was not at home. She had left for him the fulladdress of the house in the Paris _banlieue_ where she hadfound Louie, and full directions as to how to reach it. He took oneof the open cabs and drove thither in the blazing July sun. 

An interminable drive!--the whole length of the Avenue de laGrande-Armee and the Avenue de Neuilly, past the Seine and the RondPont de Courbevoie, until at last turning to the left into the wideand villainously paved road that leads to Rueil, Bougival, and St. Germain, the driver and David between them with difficultydiscovered a side street which answered to the name Dora hadseveral times given. 

They had reached one of the most squalid parts of the western_banlieue_. Houses half built and deserted in the middle, perhaps by some bankrupt builder; small traders, bakers, _charcutiers_, fried-fish sellers, lodged in structuresof lath and plaster, just run up and already crumbling;_cabarets_ of the roughest and meanest kind, adorned withhigh-sounding devices, --David mechanically noticed one which hadblazoned on its stained and peeling front, _A la renaissance duPhenix_;--heaps of rubbish and garbage with sickly childrenplaying among them; here and there some small, ill-smellingfactory; a few melancholy shrubs in new-made gardens, drooping andfestering under a cruel sun in a scorched and unclean soil:--theplace repelled and outraged every sense. Was it here that littleCecile had passed from a life of pain to a death of torture?

He rang at a sinister and all but windowless house, which he wasable to identify from Dora's directions. John opened to him, and ina little room to the right, which looked on to a rank bit ofneglected garden, he found Dora. A woman, with a scowling brow andgreedy mouth, disappeared into the back premises as he entered. 

Dora and he clasped hands. Then the sight of his face broke downeven her long-practised self-control, and she laid her head down onthe table and sobbed. But he showed little emotion; while John, standing shyly on the other side of the room, and the weeping Doracould hardly find words to tell their own story, so overwhelmedwere they by those indelible signs upon him of all that he had gonethrough. 

He asked them rapidly a number of questions. 

In the first place Dora explained that she and John were engaged inputting together whatever poor possessions the house contained of apersonal kind, that they might not either be seized for debt, orfall into the claws of the old _bonne_, a woman of the lowesttype, who had already plundered all she could. As to the wretchedhusband, very little information was forthcoming. John believedthat he had been removed to the hospital in a state of alcoholicparalysis the very week that Cecile was taken ill; at any rate hehad made no sign. 

The rest of the story which Dora had to tell may be supplemented bya few details which were either unknown to his informants, orremained unknown to David. 

Louie, on her return to Paris with David's hundred pounds, hadpromptly staked the greater part of it in certain Boursespeculations. She was quite as sorely in need of money as she hadprofessed to be while in Manchester, but for more reasons than one, as David had uncomfortably suspected. Not only did her husbandstrip her of anything he could lay hands on, but a certainfair-haired Alsatian artist a good deal younger than herself hadfor some months been preying upon her. What his hold upon herprecisely was, Father Lenoir, her director, when David went to seehim, either could not or--because the matter was covered by theconfessional seal--would not say. The artist, Brenart by name, wasa handsome youth, with a droll facile tongue, and a recklessness oftemper matching her own. He became first known to her as one of herhusband's drinking companions, then, dazzled by the wife's madbeauty, he began to haunt the handsome Madame Montjoie, as manyother persons had haunted her before him, --with no particularresults except to increase the arrogant self-complacency with whichLouie bore herself among her Catholic friends. 

In the first year of his passion, Brenart came into a smallinheritance, much of which he spent on jewellery and other presentsfor his idol. She accepted them without scruple, and his hopesnaturally rose high. But in a few months he ran through his money, his drinking habits, under Montjoie's lead, grew upon him, and hefell rapidly into a state of degradation which would have made itvery easy for Louie to shake him off, had she been so minded. 

But by this time he had, no doubt, a curious spell for her. Hewas a person of considerable gifts, an etcher of fantasticpromise, a clever musician, and the owner of a humorous _carillon_of talk, to quote M. Renan's word, which made life in hisneighbourhood perpetually amusing for those, at any rate, who tookthe grossness of its themes as a matter of course. Louie found onthe one hand that she could not do without him, in her miserableexistence; on the other that if he was not to starve she must keephim. His misfortunes revealed the fact that there was neitherchivalry nor delicacy in him; and he learnt to live upon her withsurprising quickness, and on the most romantic pretexts. 

So she made her pilgrimage to Manchester for money, and then sheplayed with her money to make it more, on the Bourse. But clever asshe was, luck was against her, and she lost. Her losses made herdesperate. So too did the behaviour of her husband, who robbed herwhenever he could, and spent most of his time on the pavements ofParis, dragging himself from one low drinking-shop to another, onlycoming home to cheat her out of fresh supplies, and goad his wifeto hideous scenes of quarrel and violence, which frightened thelife out of Cecile. Brenart, whom she could no longer subsidise, kept aloof, for mixed reasons of his own. And the landlord, not tobe trifled with any longer, gave them summary notice of eviction. 

While she was in these straits, Father Lenoir, who even duringthese months of vacillating passion and temptation had exercised acertain influence over her, came to call upon her one afternoon, being made anxious by her absence from Ste. Eulalie. He found awild-eyed haggard woman in a half-dismantled apartment, whom, forthe first time, he could not affect by any of those arts ofpersuasion or rebuke, in which his long experience as a guide ofsouls had trained him. She would tell him nothing either about herplans, or her husband; she did not respond to his skilful andreproachful comments upon her failure to give them assistance in arecent great function at Ste. Eulalie; nor was she moved by thetone of solemn and fatherly exhortation into which he graduallypassed. He left her, fearing the worst. 

On the following morning she fled to the wretched house on theoutskirts of Paris where Dora had found her. She went thither toescape from her husband; to avoid the landlord's pursuit; to cutherself adrift from the clergy of Ste. Eulalie, and to concert withBrenart a new plan of life. But Brenart failed to meet her there, and, a very few days after the flight, Cecile, already worn to ashadow, sickened with diphtheria. Either the seeds were already inher when they left Paris, or she was poisoned by the half-finisheddrainage and general insanitary state of the quarter to which theyhad removed. 

From the moment the child took to her bed, Louie fell into theblackest despair. She had often ill-used her daughter during theselast months; the trembling child, always in the house, had againand again been made the scapegoat of her mother's miseries; but sheno sooner threatened to die than Louie threw everything else in theworld aside and was madly determined she should live. 

She got a doctor, of an inferior sort, from the neighbourhood, andwhen he seemed to her to bungle, and the child got no better, shedrove him out of the house with contumely. Then she herself triedto caustic Cecile's throat, or she applied some of the old-wives'remedies, suggested by the low servant she had taken. The resultwas that the poor little victim was brought to the edge of thegrave, and Louie, reduced to abjectness, went and humbled herselfto the doctor and brought him back. This time he told her bluntlythat the child was dying and nothing could save her. Then, in herextremity, she telegraphed to David. Her brother had written to hertwice since the beginning of Lucy's illness; but when she sent hertelegram, all remembrance of her sister-in-law had vanished fromLouie's mind--Lucy might never have existed; and whether she wasalive or dead mattered nothing. 

When Dora came, she found the child speechless, and near the end. Tracheotomy had been performed, but its failure was already clear. It seemed a question of hours. John went off post-haste for afamous doctor. The great man came, agreed with the localpractitioner that nothing more could be done, and that death wasimminent. Louie, beside herself, first turned and rent him, andthen fell in a dead faint beside Cecile's bed. While the nurse, whom John had also brought from Paris, was tending both mother anddaughter, Dora sent John--who in these years had acquired a certainsmattering of foreign languages under the pressure of printing-roomneeds and David's counsel--to inquire for and fetch a priest. Shewas in an agony lest the child should die without the sacraments ofher Church. 

The priest came--a young man of a heavy peasant type--bearing theHost. Never did Dora forget that scene--the emaciated child gaspingher life away, the strange people, dimly seen amid the wreaths ofincense, who seemed to her to have flocked in from the street inthe wake of the priest, to look--the sacred words and gestures inthe midst, which, because of the quick unintelligible Latin, shecould only follow as a mystery of ineffable and saving power, thesame, so she believed, for Anglican and Catholic--and by thebedside the sullen erect form of the mother, who could not beinduced to take any part whatever in the ceremony. 

But when it was all over, and the little procession which hadbrought the Host was forming once more, Louie thrust Dora and thenurse violently away from the bed, and bent her ear down toCecile's mouth. She gave a wild and hideous cry; then drawingherself to her full height, with a tragic magnificence of movementshe stretched out one shaking hand over the poor little wastedbody, while with the other she pointed to the priest in his whiteofficiating dress. 

'Go out of this house!--go this _instant_! Who brought you in?Not I! I tell you, --last night'--she flung the phrases out infierce gasps--' I gave God the chance. I said to Him, Make Cecilewell, and I'll behave myself--I'll listen to Father Lenoir. Muchgood I've got by it all this time!--but I will. I'll live on acrust, and I'll give all I can skin and scrape to those people atSte. Eulalie. If not--then I'll go to the devil--_to the devil!_ Do you hear? I swore that. '

Her voice sank to a hoarse whisper; she bent down, still keepingeveryone at bay and at a distance from her dead child, --though Doraran to her--her head turned over her shoulder, her glowing eyes ofhatred fixed upon the priest. 

'She is mad!' he said to himself, receding quickly, lest the sacredburden he bore should suffer any indignity. 

At that moment she fell heavily on her knees beside the bedinsensible, her dark head lying on Cecile's arm. Dora, in a paletrance of terror, closed little Cecile's weary eyes, the nursecleared the room, and they laid Louie on her bed. 

When she revived, she crawled to the place where Cecile lay in herwhite grave-dress strewn with flowers, and again put everyone away, locking herself in with the body. But the rules of interment in thecase of infectious diseases are strict in France; the authoritiesconcerned intervened; and after scenes of indescribable misery andviolence, the little corpse was carried away, and, thanks to Dora'sand John's care, received tender and reverent burial. 

The mother was too exhausted to resist any more. When Dora cameback from the funeral, the nurse told her that Madame Montjoie, after having refused all meat or drink for two days, had rousedherself from what seemed the state of stupor in which the departureof the funeral procession had left her, had asked for brandy, whichhad been given her, and had then, of her own accord, swallowed acouple of opium pills, which the doctor had so far vainlyprescribed for her, and was now heavily asleep. 

Dora went to her own bed, too tired to stand, yet inexpressiblyrelieved. Her bed was a heap of wraps contrived for her by thenurse on the floor of the lower room--a bare den, reeking of damp, which called itself the _salon_. But she had never restedanywhere with such helpless thankfulness. For some hours at least, agony and conflict were still, and she had a moment in which toweep for Lucy, the news of whose death had now lain for two days adragging weight at her heart. Hateful memory!--she had forced herway in to Louie with the letter, thinking in her innocence that theknowledge of the brother's bereavement must touch the sister, or atleast momentarily divert her attention: and Louie had dashed itdown with the inconceivable words, --Dora's cheek burnt with anguishand shame, as she tried to put them out of her mind for ever, --

'Very well. Now, then, you can marry him! You know you've alwayswanted to!'

But at last that biting voice was hushed; there was not a sound inthe house; the summer night descended gently on the wretchedstreet, and in the midst of anxious discussion with herself as tohow she and John were to get Louie to England, she fell asleep. 

When Dora awoke, Louie was not in the house. After a few hours ofopium-sleep, she must have noiselessly put together all hervaluables and money, a few trifles belonging to Cecile, and a smallparcel of clothes, and have then slipped out through the gardendoor, and into a back lane or track, which would ultimately leadher down to the bank of the river. None of the three other personssleeping in the house--Dora, the nurse, the old _bonne_, hadheard a sound. 

When John arrived in the morning, his practical common sensesuggested a number of measures for Louie's pursuit, or for thediscovery of her fate, should she have made away with herself, ashe more than suspected--measures which were immediately taken byhimself, or by the lawyer, Mr. O'Kelly. 

Everything had so far been in vain. No trace of thefugitive--living or dead--could be found. 

David, sitting with his arms on the deal table in the lower room, and his face in his hands, listened in almost absolute silence tothe main facts of the story. When he looked up, it was to say, 'Have you been to Father Lenoir?'

No. Neither Dora nor John knew anything of Father Lenoir. 

David went off at once. The good priest was deeply touched andovercome by the story, but not astonished. He first told David ofthe existence of Brenart, and search was instantly made for theartist. He, too, was missing, but the police, whose cordialassistance David, by the help of Lord Driffield's important friendsin Paris, was able to secure, were confident of immediatediscovery. Day after day passed, however; innumerable false clueswere started; but at the end of some weeks Louie's fate was much ofa secret as ever. 

Dora and John had, of course, gone back to England directly afterDavid's arrival; and he now felt that his child and his work calledhim. He returned home towards the middle of August, leaving thesearch for his sister in Mr. O'Kelly's hands. 

For five months David remained doggedly at his work in Prince'sStreet. John watched him silently from day to day, showing him aquiet devotion which sometimes brought his old comrade's hand uponhis shoulder in a quick touch of gratitude, or a flash to eyesheavy with broken sleep. The winter was a bad one for trade; theprofits made by Grieve & Co. , even on much business, were butsmall; and in the consultative council of employes which David hadestablished the chairman constantly showed a dreaminess or anirritability in difficult circumstances which in earlier days wouldhave cost him influence and success. But the men, who knew himwell, looked at each other askance, and either spoke their minds orbore with him as seemed best. They were well aware that while wageseverywhere else had been cut down, theirs were undiminished; thatthe profits from the second-hand book trade which remainednominally outside the profit-sharing partnership were practicallyall spent in furthering the social ends of it; and that the master, in his desolate house, with his two maid-servants, one of them hisboy's nurse, lived as modestly as any of them, yet with help alwaysto spare for the sick and the unfortunate. To a man they remainedloyal to the firm and the scheme; but among even the best of themthere was a curious difference of opinion as to David and his ways. They profited by them, and they would see him through; but therewas an uncomfortable feeling that, if such ideas were to spread, they might cut both ways and interfere too much with the easyliving which the artisan likes and desires as much as any otherman. 

Meanwhile, those who have followed the history of David Grieve withany sympathy will not find it difficult to believe that this autumnand winter were with him a time of intense mental anguish anddepression. The shock and tragedy of Louie's disappearancefollowing on the prolonged nervous exhaustion caused by Lucy'sstruggle for life had brought him into a state similar to that inwhich his first young grief had left him; only with thisdifference, that the nature being now deeper and richer was but themore capable of suffering. The passion of religious faith which hadcarried him through Lucy's death had dwindled by natural reaction;he believed, but none the less he walked in darkness. The crueltyof his wife's fate, meditated upon through lonely and restlessnights, tortured beyond bearing a soul made for pity; and every nowand then wild fits of remorse for his original share in Louie'ssins and misfortunes would descend upon him, and leave no access toreason. 

His boy, his work, and his books, these were ultimately hisprotections from himself. Sandy climbed about him, or got intomischief with salutary frequency. The child slept beside his fatherat night, and in the evenings was always either watching for him atthe gate or standing thumb in mouth with his face pressed againstthe window, and his bright eye scanning the dusk. 

For the rest, after a first period of utter numbness andlanguor, David was once more able to read, and he read withvoracity--science, philosophy, belles lettres. Two subjects, however, held his deepest mind all through, whatever might be addedto them--the study of ethics, in their bearing upon religiousconceptions, and the study of Christian origins. His thoughtsabout them found occasional outlet, either in his talks withAncrum--whose love soothed him, and whose mind, with all itsweaknesses and its strong Catholic drift, he had long found to beinfinitely freer and more hospitable in the matter of ideas thanthe average Anglican mind--or in his journal. 

A few last extracts from the journal may be given. It should beremembered that the southern element in him made such a mode ofexpression more easy and natural to him than it ever can be to mostEnglishmen. 

'_November 2nd_. --It seems to me that last night was thefirst night since she died that I have not dreamt of her. As arule, I am always with her in sleep, and for that reason I am themore covetous of the sleep which comes to me so hardly. It is asecond life. Yet before her illness, during our married life, Ihardly knew what it was to dream. 

'Two nights ago I thought I was standing beside her. She was lyingon the long couch under the sycamore tree whither we used to carryher. At first, everything was wholly lifelike and familiar. Sandywas somewhere near. She had the grey camel's hair shawl over hershoulders, which I remember so well, and the white frilled capdrawn loosely together under her chin, over bandages and dressings, as usual. She asked me to fetch something for her from the house, and I went, full of joy. There seemed to be a strange mixed senseat the bottom of my heart that I had somehow lost her and found heragain. 

'When I came back, nurse was there, and everything was changed. Nurse looked at me with meaning, startled eyes, as much as to say, "Look closely, it is not as you think. " And as I went up to her, lying still and even smiling on her couch, there was animperceptible raising of her little white hand as though to keep meoff. Then in a flash I saw that it was not my living Lucy; that itcould only be her spirit. I felt an awful sense of separation andyet of yearning; sitting down on one of the mossy stones besideher, I wept bitterly, and so woke, bathed in tears. 

'... It has often seemed to me lately that certain elements in theResurrection stories may be originally traced to such experiencesas these. I am irresistibly drawn to believe that the strange andmystic scene beside the lake, in the appendix chapter to the Gospelof St. John, arose in some such way. There is the same mixture ofelements--of the familiar with the ghostly, the trivial with thepassionate and exalted--which my own consciousness has so oftentrembled under in these last visionary months. 

The well-known lake, the old scene of fishers and fishing-boats, and on the shore the mysterious figure of the Master, the same, yetnot the same, the little, vivid, dream-like details of the fire ofcoals, the broiled fish, and bread, the awe and longing of thedisciples--it is borne in upon me with extraordinary convictionthat the whole of it sprang, to begin with, from the dream of griefand exhaustion. Then, in an age which attached a peculiar andmystical importance to dreams, the beautiful thrilling fancy passedfrom mouth to mouth, became almost immediately history instead ofdream, --just as here and there a parable misunderstood has takenthe garb of an event, --was after a while added to and made moreprecise in the interest of apologetics, or of doctrine, or of thesimple love of elaboration, and so at last found a finalresting-place as an epilogue to the fourth Gospel. '

'NOVEMBER 4TH. --To-night I have dared to read again Browning's"Rabbi ben Ezra. " For months I have not been able to read it, orthink of it, though for days and weeks towards the end of her lifeit seemed to be graven on my heart. 

 Look not thou down, but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal The new wine's foaming glow, The Master's lips a-glow!

Thou heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?

'Let me think again, my God, of that astonishing ripening of herlast days!--of all her little acts of love and gratitude towardsme, towards her nurse, towards the people in the house, who hadhelped to tend her--of her marvellous submission, when once theblack cloud of the fear of death, and the agony of parting fromlife had left her. 

'And such facts alone in the world's economy are to have nomeaning, point no-whither? I could as soon believe it as that, inthe physical universe, the powers of the magnet, or the flash ofthe lightning, are isolated and meaningless--tell us nothing andlead nowhere. 

_'November 10th. _--In the old days--there is a passage of thekind in an earlier part of this journal--I was constantly troubled, and not for myself only, but for others, the poor and unlearnedespecially, who, as it seemed to me, would lose most in thecrumbling of the Christian mythology--as to the intellectualdifficulties of the approach to God. All this philosophical travailof two thousand years--and so many doubts and darknesses! Aworld athirst for preaching, and nothing simple or clear topreach--when once the miracle-child of Bethlehem had beendispossessed. And _now_ it is daylight-plain to me that in thesimplest act of loving self-surrender there is the germ of allfaith, the essence of all lasting religion. Quicken human service, purify and strengthen human love, and have no fear but that theconscience will find its God! For all the time this quickeningand this purification are His work in thee. Around thee are theinstitutions, the ideals, the knowledge and beliefs, ethical orintellectual, in which that work, that life, have been so farfragmentarily and partially realised. Submit thyself and pressforward. Thou knowest well what it means to be _better:_ morepure, more loving, more self-denying. And in thy struggle to be allthese, God cometh to thee and abides.... _But the greatest ofthese is love!_'

_'November 20th. _--To-day I have finished the last of my NewTestament tracts, the last at any rate for a time. While Ancrumlives I have resolved to suspend them. They trouble him deeply; andI, who owe him so much, will not voluntarily add to his burden. Hiswife is with him, a somewhat heavy, dark-faced woman, with aslumbrous eye, which may, however, be capable of kindling. Theyhave left Mortimer Street, and have gone to live in a little houseon the road to Cheadle. He seems perfectly happy, and though thedoctor is discouraging, I at least can see no change for the worse. She sits by him and reads or works, without much talking, but isall the time attentive to his lightest movement. Friends send themflowers which brighten the little house, his "boys" visit him inthe evenings, he is properly fed, and altogether I am more happyabout him than I have been for long. It required considerablecourage, this move, on her part; for there are a certain number ofpeople still left who knew Ancrum at college, and remember thestory; and those who believed him a bachelor are of coursescandalised and wondering. But the talk, whatever it is, does notseem to molest them much. He offered to leave Manchester, but shewould not let him. "What would he do away from you and his boys?"she said to me. There is a heroism in it all the same. 

'... So my New Testament work may rest a while. --During theseautumn weeks, it has helped me through some terrible hours. 

'When I look back over the mass of patient labour which hasaccumulated during the present century round the founder ofChristianity and the origins of his society--when I compare thetext-books of the day with the text-books of sixty years ago--I nolonger wonder at the empty and ignorant arrogance with which theFrench eighteenth century treated the whole subject. The firststone of the modern building had not been laid when Voltaire wrote, unless perhaps in the Wolfenbuttel fragments. He knew, in truth, no more than the Jesuits, much less in fact than the better menamong them. 

'... It has been like the unravelling of a piece of fine andancient needlework--and so discovering the secrets of its make andcraftsmanship. A few loose ends were first followed up; thengradually the whole tissue has been involved, till at last thenature and quality of each thread, the purpose and the skill ofeach stitch, are becoming plain, and what was mystery rises intoknowledge. 

'... But how close and fine a web!--and how difficult and patientthe process by which Christian reality has to be grasped! There isno short cut--one must toil. 

'But after one has toiled, what are the rewards? Truth first--whichis an end in itself and not a means to anything beyond. Then--thegreat figure of Christianity given back to you--with something atleast of the first magic, the first "natural truth" of look andtone. Through and beyond dogmatic overlay, and Messianic theory andwonder-loving addition, to recover, at least fragmentarily, theactual voice, the first meaning, which is also the eternal meaning, of Jesus--Paul--"John"!

'Finally--a conception of Christianity in which you discern oncemore its lasting validity and significance--its imperishable placein human life. It becomes simply that preaching of the Kingdomof God which belongs to and affects you--you, the modernEuropean--just as Greek philosophy, Stoic or Cynic, was thatpreaching of it which belonged to and affected Epictetus. '

'November 24th. --Mr. O'Kelly writes to me to-day his usual hopelessreport. No news! I do not even know whether she is alive, and I cando nothing--absolutely nothing. 

'Yes--let me correct myself, there is some news of an event which, if we could find her, might simplify matters a little. Montjoie isdead in hospital--at the age of thirty-six--

'Is there any other slavery and chain like that of temperament? AsI look back on the whole course of my relation to Louie, I amconscious only of a sickening sense of utter failure. Our fatherleft her to me, and I have not been able to hold her backfrom--nay, I have helped to plunge her into the most obvious andcommonplace ruin. Yet I am always asking myself, if it were to doagain, could I do any better? Has any other force developed in mewhich would make it possible for me _now_ to break through thebarriers between her nature and mine, to love her sincerely, askingfor nothing again, to help her to a saner and happier life?

'If sometimes I dream that so it is, it is to _her_ I oweit--to _her_ whom I carry on my bosom, and whose hand didonce, or so it seemed, unlock to me the gates of God. _Lucy! myLucy!_

'... All my past life becomes sometimes intolerable to me. I cansee nothing in it that is not tarnished and flecked with blackstains of egotism, pride, hardness, moral indolence. 

'And the only reparation possible, "Be ye transformed by therenewing of your minds, " at which my fainting heart sinks. 

'Sometimes I find much comfort in the saying of a lonely thinker, "Let us humbly accept from God even our own nature; not that we arecalled upon to accept the evil and the disease in us, but let usaccept _ourselves_ in spite of the evil and the disease. "

_'Que vivre est difficile--mon coeur fatigue!'_

CHAPTER XI

By the end of December David Grieve was near breaking down. 

Dr. Mildmay insisted brusquely on his going away. 

'As far as I can see you will live to be an old man, ' he said, 'butif you go on like this, it will be with shattered powers. You aredriving yourself to death, yet at the present moment you have nonatural driving force. It is all artificial, a matter of will. Do, for heaven's sake, get away from these skies and these streets, andleave all work and all social reforms behind. The first business ofthe citizen--prate as you like!--is to keep his nerves and hisdigestion in going order. '

David laughed and yielded. The advice, in fact, corresponded to aninward thirst, and had, moreover, a coincidence to back it. In oneof the Manchester papers two or three mornings before he had seenthe advertisement of a farm to let, which had set vibrating all hispassion for and memory of the moorland. It was a farm about half amile from Needham Farm, on one of the lower slopes of Kinder Low. It had belonged to a peasant owner, lately dead. The heirs wishedto sell, but failing a purchaser were willing to let on a shortlease. 

It was but a small grazing farm, and the rent was low. David wentto the agent, took it at once, and in a few days, to the amazementof Reuben and Hannah, to whom he wrote only the night before hearrived, he and Sandy, and a servant, were established with aminimum of furniture, but a sufficiency of blankets and coals, intwo or three rooms of the little grey-walled house. 

'Well, it caps me, it do!' Hannah said to herself, in herastonishment as she stood on her own doorstep the day after thearrival, and watched the figures of David and Sandy disappearingalong the light crisp snow of the nearer fields in the direction ofthe Red Brook and the sheep-fold. They had looked in to ask forReuben, and had gone in pursuit of him. 

What on earth should make a man in the possession of his naturalsenses leave a warm town-house in January, and come to camp in 'owdBen's' farm, was, indeed, past Hannah's divination. In reality, nosudden resolve could have been happier. Sandy was a hardy littlefellow, and with the first breath of the moorland wind David felt aload, which had been growing too heavy to bear, lifting from hisbreast. His youth, his manhood, reasserted themselves. The bracingclearness of what seemed to be the setting-in of a long frost put anew life into him; winter's 'bright and intricate device' ofice-fringed stream, of rimy grass, of snow-clad moor, of steel-blueskies, filled him once more with natural joy, carried him out ofhimself. He could not keep himself indoors; he went about withReuben or the shepherd, after the sheep; he fed the cattle atNeedham Farm, and brought his old knowledge to bear on the rearingof a sickly calf; he watched for the grouse, or he carried hispockets full of bread for the few blackbirds or moor-pippits thatcheered his walks into the fissured solitudes of the great Peakplateau, walks which no one to whom every inch of the ground wasnot familiar dared have ventured, seeing how misleading andtreacherous even light snow-drifts may become in the black bog-landof these high and lonely moors; or he toiled up the side of theScout with Sandy on his back, that he might put the boy on one ofthe boulders beside the top of the Downfall, and, holding him fast, bid him look down at the great icicles which marked its steep andwaterless bed, gleaming in the short-lived sun. 

The moral surroundings, too, of the change were cheering. There, over the brow, in the comfortable little cottage, where he hadlong since placed her, with a woman to look after her, wasMargaret--quite childish and out of her mind, but happy and wellcared for. He and Sandy would trudge over from time to time to seeher, he carrying the boy in a plaid slung round his shoulders whenthe snow was deep. Once Sandy went to Frimley with the Needham Farmshepherd, and when David came to fetch him he found the boy andMargaret playing cat's-cradle together by the fire, and theeagerness in Sandy's pursed lips, and on the ethereally blanchedand shrunken face of Margaret, brought the tears to David's eyes, as he stood smiling and looking on. But she did not suffer; formemory was gone; only the gentle 'imperishable child' remained. 

And at Needham Farm he had never known the atmosphere so still. Reuben was singularly cheerful and placid. Whether by the merephysical weakening of years, or by some slow softening of the soul, Hannah and her ways were no longer the daily scourge and perplexityto her husband they had once been. She was a harsh and tyrannouswoman still, but not now openly viperish or cruel. With thedisappearance of old temptations, the character had, to someextent, righted itself. Her sins of avarice and oppression towardsSandy's orphans had raised no Nemesis that could be traced, eitherwithin or without. It is doubtful whether she ever knew whatself-reproach might mean; in word, at any rate, she was to the endas loudly confident as at the first. Nevertheless it mightcertainly be said that at sixty she was a better and more tolerablehuman being than she had been at fifty. 

'Aye, if yo do but live long enoof, yo get past t' bad bits o' t'road, ' Reuben said one night, with a long breath, to David, andthen checked himself, brought up either by a look at his nephew'smourning dress, or by a recollection of what David had told him ofLouie the night before. 

It troubled Reuben indeed, something in the old fashion, that hiswife would show no concern whatever for Louie when he repeated toher the details of that disappearance whereof so far he and she hadknown only the bare fact. 

'Aye, I thowt she'd bin and married soom mak o' rabblement, 'remarked Hannah. 'Yo doant suppose ony decent mon ud put up wi her. What Davy wants wi lookin for her I doant know. He'll be hard-setwhen he's fand her, I should think. '

She was equally impervious and sarcastic with regard to David'ssocial efforts. Her sharp tongue exercised itself on the 'poor way'in which he seemed to live, and when Reuben repeated to her, withsome bewilderment, the facts which she had egged him on to get outof David, her scorn knew no bounds. 

'Weel, it's like t' Bible after aw, Hannah, ' said Reuben, perplexedand remonstrating; 'theer's things, yo'll remember, abeawt gien t'coat off your back, an sellin aw a mon has, an th' loike, 'at fairlybeats me soomtimes. '

'Oh--go long wi yo!' said Hannah in high wrath. 'He an his loike'llmak a halliblash of us aw soon, wi their silly faddle, an pamperino' workin men, wha never wor an never will be noa better nor theyshould be. But--thank the Lord--_I_'ll not be theer to see. '

And after this communication she found it very difficult to treatDavid civilly. 

But to David's son--to Sandy--Hannah Grieve capitulated, for thefirst and only time in her life. 

On the second and third day after his arrival, Sandy came over withthe servant to ask Hannah's help in some small matter of the newhousehold. As they neared the farm door, Tim, the aged Tim, who wasslouching behind, was suddenly set upon by a new and ill-temperedcollie of Reuben's, who threatened very soon to shake the life outof his poor toothless victim. But Sandy, who had a stick, rushed athim, his cheeks and eyes glowing with passion. 

'Get away! you great big dog, you! and leave my middle-sized dogalone!'

And he belaboured and pulled at the collie, without a thought offear, till the farm-man and Hannah came and separated thecombatants, --stalking into the farm kitchen afterwards in aspeechless rage at the cowardly injustice which had been done toTim. As he sat in the big rocking-chair, fiercely cuddling Tim andsucking his thumb, his stormy breath subsiding by degrees, Hannahthought him, as she confessed to the only female friend shepossessed in the world, 'the pluckiest and bonniest little grig i'th' coontry side. '

Thenceforward, so far as her queer temper would allow, she becamehis nurse and slave, and David, with all the memorials of his ownhard childhood about him, could not believe his eyes, when he foundSandy established day after day in the Needham Farm kitchen, sucking his thumb in a corner of the settle, and ordering Hannahabout with the airs of a three-tailed bashaw. She stuffed him withhot girdle-cakes; she provided for him a store of 'humbugs, ' theindigenous sweet of the district, which she made and baked with herown hands, and had not made before for forty years; she took himabout with her, 'rootin, ' as she expressed it, after the hens andpigs and the calves; till, Sandy's exactions growing with hercompliance, the common fate of tyrants overtook him. He one dayasked too much and his slave rebelled. David saw him come in oneafternoon, and found him a minute or two after viciously biting theblind-cord in the parlour, in a black temper. When his fatherinquired what was the matter, Sandy broke out in a sudden wail oftears. 

'Why _can't_ she be a Kangawoo when I want her to?'

Whereupon David, with the picture of Hannah's grim figure, cap andall, before his mind's eye, went into the first fit of side-shakinglaughter that had befallen him for many and many a month. 

On a certain gusty afternoon towards the middle of February, Davidwas standing alone beside the old smithy. The frost, after atemporary thaw, had set in again, there had been tolerably heavysnow the night before, and it was evident from the shifting of thewind and the look of the clouds that were coming up from thenorth-east over the Scout that another fall was impending. But theday had been fine, and the sun, setting over the Cheshire hills, threw a flood of pale rose into the white bosom of the Scout and onthe heavy clouds piling themselves above it. It was a moment ofexquisite beauty and wildness. The sunlit snow gleamed against thestormy sky; the icicles lining the steep channel of the Downfallshone jagged and rough between the white and smoothly rounded banksof moor, or the snow-wreathed shapes of the grit boulders; to hisleft was the murmur of the Red Brook creeping between its frozenbanks; while close beside him about twenty of the moor sheep werehuddling against the southern wall of the smithy in prescience ofthe coming storm. Almost within reach of his stick was the pan ofhis childish joy, the water left in it by the December rains frozenhard and white; and in the crevice of the wall he had justdiscovered the mouldering remains of a toy-boat. 

He stood and looked out over the wide winter world, rejoicing inits austerity, its solemn beauty. Physically he was conscious ofrecovered health; and in the mind also there was a new energy oflife and work. Nature seemed to say to him, "Do but keep thy heartopen to me, and I have a myriad aspects and moods wherewith tointerest and gladden and teach thee to the end;" while, as his eyewandered to the point where Manchester lay hidden on the horizon, the world of men, of knowledge, of duty, summoned him back to itwith much of the old magic and power in the call. His grief, hislove, no man should take from him; but he must play his part. 

Yes--he and Sandy must go home--and soon. Yet even as he sodecided, the love of the familiar scene, its freedom, itsloneliness, its unstainedness, rose high within him. He stood lostin a trance of memory. Here he and Louie had listened to 'Lias';there, far away amid the boulders of the Downfall, they had waitedfor the witch; among those snow-laden bushes yonder Louie hadhidden when she played Jenny Crum for the discomfiture of theprayer-meeting; and it was on the slope at his feet that she hadpushed the butter-scotch into his mouth, the one and only sign ofaffection she had ever given him, that he could remember, in alltheir forlorn childhood. 

As these things rose before him, the moor, the wind, the risingvoice of the storm became to him so many channels, whereby thebitter memory of his sister rushed upon him and took possession. Everything spoke of her, suggested her. Then with inexorable forcehis visualising gift carried him on past her childhood to thescenes of her miserable marriage; and as he thought of her child'sdeath, the desolation and madness of her flight, the mystery of herfate, his soul was flooded once more for the hundredth time withanguish and horror. Here in this place, where their childish liveshad been so closely intertwined, he could not resign himself forever to ignorance, to silence; his whole being went out in protest, in passionate remorseful desire. 

The wind was beginning to blow fiercely; the rosy glow was gone;darkness was already falling. Wild gusts swept from time to timeround the white amphitheatre of moor and crag; the ghostly soundsof night and storm were on the hills. Suddenly it was to him asthough he heard his name called from a great distance--breathedshrilly and lingeringly along the face of the Scout. 

'_David_!'

It was Louie's voice. The illusion was so strong that, as he raisedhis hand to his ear, turning towards the Downfall, whence the soundseemed to come, he trembled from head to foot. 

'_David!_'

Was it the call of some distant boy or shepherd? He could not tell, could not collect himself. He sank down on one of the grit-bouldersby the snow-wreathed door of the smithy and sat there long, heedless of the storm and cold, his mind working, a sudden purposerising and unfolding, with a mysterious rapidity and excitement. 

Early on the following morning he made his way down through thedeep snow to the station, having first asked Hannah to take chargeof Sandy for a day or two; and by the night mail he left London forParis. 

It was not till he walked into Mr. O'Kelly's office, on the groundfloor of a house in the Rue d'Assas, at about eleven o'clock on thenext day, that he was conscious of any reaction. Then for abewildered instant he wondered why he had come, and what he was tosay. 

But to his amazement the lawyer rose at once, throwing up his handswith the gesture of one who notes some singular and unexpectedstroke of good fortune. 

'This is _most_ extraordinary, Mr. Grieve! I have not yetsigned the letter on my desk--there it is!--summoning you to Paris. We have discovered Madame Montjoie! As constantly happens, we havebeen pursuing inquiries in all sorts of difficult and remotequarters, and she is here--at our doors, living for some weekspast, at any rate, without any disguise, at _Barbizon_, of allplaces in the world! Barbizon _pres_ Fontainebleau. You knowit?'

David sat down. 

'Yes, ' he said, after an instant. 'I know it. Is he--is that manBrenart there?'

'Certainly. He has taken a miserable studio, and is making, orpretending to make, some winter studies of the forest. I hear thatMadame Montjoie looks ill and worn; the neighbours say the_menage_ is a very uncomfortable one, and not likely to lastlong. I wish I had better news for you, Mr. Grieve. '

And the lawyer, remembering the handsome hollow-eyed boy of twentywho had first asked his help, studied with irrepressible curiositythe man's noble storm-beaten look and fast grizzling hair, as Davidsat before him with his head bent and his hat in his hands. 

They talked a while longer, and then David said, rising:

'Can I get over there to-night? The snow will be deep in theforest. '

'I imagine they will keep that main road to Barbizon open in somefashion, ' said the lawyer. 'You may find a sledge. Let me know howyou speed and whether I can assist you. But, I fear, '--he shruggedhis shoulders--'in the end this wild life _gets into theblood_. I have seen it so often. '

He spoke with the freedom and knowledge of one who had observedLouie Montjoie with some closeness for eleven years. David saidnothing in answer; but at the door he turned to ask a question. 

'You can't tell me anything of the habits of this man--thisBrenart?'

'Stop!' said the lawyer, after a moment's thought; 'I remember thisdetail--my agent told me that M. Brenart was engaged in some workfor "D--et Cie"'--he named a great picture-dealing firm on theBoulevard St. Germain, famous for their illustrated books and_editions de luxe_. --'He did not hear what it was, but--ah! Iremember, --it has taken him occasionally to Paris, or so he says, and it has been these absences which have led to some of the worstscenes between him and your sister. I suppose she put a jealouswoman's interpretation on them. You want to see her alone?--whenthis man is out of the way? I have an idea: take my card and yourown to this person--' he wrote out an address--'he is one of thejunior partners in "D--et Cie"; I know him, and I got his firmthe sale of a famous picture. He will do me a good turn. Ask himwhat the work is that M. Brenart is doing, and when he expects himnext in Paris. It is possible you may get some useful information. '

David took the card and walked at once to the Boulevard St. Germain, which was close by. He was civilly received by the man towhom O'Kelly had sent him, and learned from him that Brenart wasdoing for the firm a series of etchings illustrating the forest inwinter, and intended to make part of a great book on Fontainebleauand the Barbizon school. They were expecting the last batch fromhim, were indeed desperately impatient for them. But he was adifficult fellow to deal with--an exceedingly clever artist, buttotally untrustworthy. In his last letter to them he had spoken ofbringing the final instalment to them, and returning some correctedproofs by February 16--'to-morrow, I see, ' said the speaker, glancing at an almanac on his office table. 'Well, we may get them, and we mayn't. If we don't, we shall have to take strong measures. And now, Monsieur, I think I have told you all I can tell you ofour relations to M. Brenart. '

David bowed and took his leave. He made his way through the greatshop with its picture-covered walls and its floors dotted withstands on which lay exposed the new etchings and engravings ofthe season. In front of him a lady in black was also making herway to the door and the street. No one was attending her, andinstinctively he hurried forward to open the heavy glass door forher. As he did so a sudden sharp presentiment shot through him. Thedoor swung to behind them, and he found himself in the coveredentrance of the shop face to face with Elise Delaunay. 

The meeting was so startling that neither could disguise the shockof it. He took off his hat mechanically; she grew white and leantagainst the glass window. 

'You!--how can it be you?' she said in a quick whisper, thenrecovering herself--'Monsieur Grieve, old associations are painful, and I am neither strong--nor--nor stoical. Which way are youwalking?'

'Towards the Rue de Seine, ' he said, thrown into a bewildering mistof memory by her gesture, the crisp agitated decision of hermanner. 'And you?'

'I also. We will walk a hundred yards together. What are you inParis for?'

'I am here on some business of my sister's, ' he said evasively. 

She raised her eyes, and looked at him long and sharply. He, on hisside, saw, with painful agitation, that her youth was gone, but nother grace, not her singular and wiltful charm. The little faceunder her black hat was lined and sallow, and she was startlinglythin. The mouth had lost its colour, and gained instead the hardshrewdness of a woman left to battle with the world and povertyalone; but the eyes had their old plaintive trick; the dead gold ofthe hair, the rings and curls of it against the white temples, werestill as beautiful as they had ever been; and the light form movedbeside him with the same quick floating gait. 

'You have grown much older, ' she said abruptly. 'You look as if youhad suffered--but what of that?--_C'est comme tout le monde_. '

She withdrew her look a moment, with a little bitter gesture, thenshe resumed, drawn on by a curiosity and emotion she could notcontrol. 

'Are you married?'

'Yes, but my wife is dead. '

She gave a start; the first part of the answer had not prepared herfor the second. 

'_Ah, mon Dieu I_' she said, 'always grief--_always_! Isit long?'

'Eight months. I have a boy. And you?--I heard sad news of youonce--the only time. '

'You might well, ' she said, with a half-ironical accent, drivingthe point of her umbrella restlessly into the crevices of thestones, as they slowly crossed a paved street. 'My husband is only acripple, confined to his chair, --I am no longer an artist but anartisan, --I have not painted a _picture_ for years, --but whatI paint sells for a trifle, and there is soup in the pot--of asort. For the rest I spend my life in making _tisane_, inlifting weights too heavy for me, and bargaining for things to eat. '

'But--you are not unhappy!' he said to her boldly, with a change oftone. 

She stopped, struck by the indescribable note in his voice. Theyhad turned into a side street, whither she had unconsciously ledhim. She stood with her eyes on the ground, then she lifted themonce more, and there was in them a faint beautiful gleam, whichtransformed the withered and sharpened face. 

'You are quite right, ' she said, 'if he will only live. He dependson me for everything. It is like a child, but it consoles. Adieu!'

That night David found himself in the little _auberge_ atBarbizon. He had discovered a sledge to take him across the forest, and he and his driver had pushed their way under a sky of lead andthrough whirling clouds of fresh sleet past the central beechwood, where the great boles stood straight and bare amid fantastic massesof drift; through the rock and fir region, where all was white, andthe trees drooped under their wintry load; and beneath withered andleaning oaks, throwing gaunt limbs here and there from out thesoftening effacing mantle of the snow. Night fell when the journeywas half over, and as the lights of the sledge flashed from side toside into these lonely fastnesses of cold, how was it possible tobelieve that summer and joy had ever tabernacled here?

He was received at the inn, as his driver had brought him--withastonishment. But Barbizon has been long accustomed, beyond mostplaces in France, to the eccentricities of the English and Americanvisitor; and being a home of artists, it understands the hunt for"impressions, " and easily puts up with the unexpected. Before acouple of hours were over, David was installed in a freezing room, and was being discussed in the kitchen, where his arrival produceda certain animation, as the usual English madman in quest of asensation, and no doubt ready to pay for it. 

There were, however, three other guests in the inn, as he found, when he descended for dinner. They were all artists--young, noisy, _bons camarades_, and of a rough and humble social type. Tothem the winter at Barbizon was as attractive as anywhere else. Life at the inn was cheap, and free; they had the digestion ofostriches, eating anything that was put before them, and drinkingoceans of red wine at ten sous a litre; on bad days they smoked, fed, worked at their pictures or played coarse practical jokes oneach other and the people of the inn; in fine weather there wasalways the forest to be exploited, and the chance of some happy andprofitable inspiration. 

They stared at David a good deal during the _biftek_, the blackpudding which seemed to be a staple dish of the establishment, and the _omelette aux fines herbes_, which the landlord's wifehad added in honour of the stranger. One of them, behind theshelter of his glasses, drew the outline of the Englishman'shead and face on the table-cloth, and showed it to his neighbour. 

'Poetical, grand style, _hein_?'

The other nodded carelessly. '_Pourtant--l'hiver lui plait_, 'he hummed under his breath, having some lines of Hugo's, which hehad chosen as a motto for a picture, running in his head. 

After dinner everybody gathered round the great fire, whichthe servant had piled with logs, while the flames, and thewreaths of smoke from the four pipes alternately revealed andconcealed the rough sketches of all sorts--landscape, portrait, _genre_--legacies of bygone visitors, wherewith the walls ofthe _salle a manger_ were covered. David sat in his cornersmoking, ready enough to give an account of his journey across theforest, and to speak when he was spoken to. 

As soon as the strangeness of the new-comer had a little worn off, the three young fellows plunged into a flood of amusing gossipabout the storm and the blocking of the roads, the scarcity of foodin Barbizon, the place in general, and its inhabitants. David fellsilent after a while, stiffening under a presentiment which wassoon realised. He heard his sister's wretched lot discussed withshouts of laughter--the chances of Brenart's escape from themistress he had already wearied of and deceived--the perils of 'laMontjoie's' jealousy. _'Il veut bien se debarrasser d'elle--maison ne plaisante pas avec une tigresse_!' said one of thespeakers. So long as there was information to be got which mightserve him he sat motionless, withdrawn into the dark, forcinghimself to listen. When the talk became mere scurrility and noise, he rose and went out. 

He passed through the courtyard of the inn, and turned down thevillage street. The storm had gone down, and there were a few starsamid the breaking clouds. Here and there a light shone from the lowhouses on either hand; the snow, roughly shovelled from the footpavements, lay piled in heaps along the roadway, the white roofsshone dimly against the wild sky. He passed Madame Pyat's_maisonnette_, pausing a moment to look over the wall. Not asign of life in the dark building, and, between him and it, greatdrifts of snow choking up and burying the garden. A little furtheron, as he knew, lay the goal of his quest. He easily made out thehouse from Mr. O'Kelly's descriptions, and he lingered a minute, onthe footway, under an overhanging roof to look at it. It was just alabourer's cottage standing back a little from the street, and toone side rose a high wooden addition which he guessed to be thestudio. Through the torn blind came the light of a lamp, and as hestood there, himself invisible in his patch of darkness, he heardvoices--an altercation, a woman's high shrill note. 

Then he crept back to the inn vibrating through all his being tothe shame of those young fellows' talk, the incredible difficultyof the whole enterprise. Could he possibly make any impression uponher whatever? What was done was done; and it would be a crime onhis part to jeopardise in the smallest degree the wholesomebrightness of Sandy's childhood by any rash proposals which itmight be wholly beyond his power to carry out. 

He carried up a basket of logs to his room, made them blaze, andcrouched over them till far into the night. But in the end thedoubt and trouble of his mind subsided; his purpose grew clearagain. 'It was my own voice that spoke to me on the moor, ' hethought, 'the voice of my own best life. '

About eight o'clock, with the first light of the morning, he wasroused by bustle and noise under his window. He got up, and, looking out, saw two sledges standing before the inn, in the coldgrey light. Men were busy harnessing a couple of horses to each, and there were a few figures, muffled in great coats and carryingbags and wraps, standing about. 

'They are going over to Fontainebleau station, ' he thought; 'if thatman keeps his appointment in Paris to-day, he will go with them. '

As the words passed through his mind, a figure came stridingup from the lower end of the street, a young fair-haired man, in a heavy coat lined with sheepskin. His delicately madeface--naturally merry and _bon enfant_--was flushed andscowling. He climbed into one of the sledges, complained of thelateness of the start, swore at the ostler, who made him takeanother seat on the plea that the one he had chosen was engaged, and finally subsided into a moody silence, pulling at hismoustache, and staring out over the snow, till at last the signalwas given, and the sledges flew off on the Fontainebleau road, under a shower of snowballs which a group of shivering bright-eyedurchins on their way to school threw after them, as soon as thegreat whips were at a safe distance. 

David dressed and descended. 

'Who was that fair-haired gentleman in the first sledge?' hecasually asked of the landlord who was bringing some smoking hotcoffee into the _salle a manger_. 

'That was a M. Brenart, monsieur, ' said the landlord, cheerfully, absorbed all the while in the laying of his table. '_C'est undrole de corps, M. Brenart_. I don't take to him much myself;and as for madame--_qui n'est pas madame!_'

He shrugged his shoulders, saw that there were no fresh rolls, anddeparted with concern to fetch them. 

David ate and drank. He would give her an hour yet. 

When his watch told him that the time was come, he went out slowly, inquiring on the way if there would be any means of getting toParis later in the day. Yes, the landlord thought a conveyance ofsome sort could be managed--if monsieur would pay for it!

A few minutes later David knocked at the door of Brenart's house. He could get no answer at all, and at last he tried the latch. Ityielded to his hand, and he went in. 

There was no one in the bare kitchen, but there were the remains ofa fire, and of a meal. Both the crockery on the table and a fewrough chairs and stools the room contained struck him as being ingreat disorder. There were two doors at the back. One led into aback room which was empty, the other down a few steps into agarden. He descended the steps and saw the long wooden erection ofthe studio stretching to his left. There was a door in the centreof its principal wall, which was ajar. He went up to it and softlypushed it open. There, at the further end, huddled over an ironstove, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaken withfierce sobs, was Louie. 

He closed the door behind him, and at the sound she turned, hastily. When she saw who it was she gave a cry, and, sinking backon her low canvas chair, she lay staring at him, and speechless. Her eyes were red with weeping; her beauty was a wreck; and in faceof the despair which breathed from her, and from her miserablesurroundings, all doubt, all repulsion, all condemnation fled fromthe brother's heart. The iron in his soul melted. He ran up to her, and, kneeling beside her, he put his arms round her, as he hadnever done in his life. 

'Oh you poor thing--you poor thing!' he cried, scarcely knowingwhat he said. He took her worn, tear-stained face, and, laying iton his shoulder, he kissed her, breathing incoherent words of pityand consolation. 

She submitted a while, helpless with shock and amazement, and stillshaken with the tempest of her own passion. But there came a momentwhen she pushed him away and tried desperately to recover herself. 

'I don't know what you want--you're not going to have anything todo with me now--you can't. Let me alone--it will be over soon--oneway or the other. '

And she sat upright, one hand clenched on her knees, her frowningbrows drawn together, and the tears falling in spite of her intenseeffort to drive them back. 

He found a painter's stool, and sat down by her, pale anddetermined. He told her the history of his search; he implored herto be guided by him, to let him take her home to England andManchester, where her story was unknown, save to Dora and John. Hewould make a home for her near his own; he would try to comfort herfor the loss of her child; they would understand each other better, and the past should be buried. 

Louie looked at him askance. Every now and then she ceased tolisten to him at all; while, under the kindling of her ownthoughts, her wild eyes flamed into fresh rage and agony. 

'Don't!--leave me alone!' she broke out at last, springing up. 'Idon't want your help, I don't want you; I only want _him_, --and I will have him, or we shall kill each other. '

She paced to and fro, her hands clasped on her breast, her whiteface setting into a ghastly calm. David gazed at her with horror. This was another note! one which in all their experience of eachother he had never heard on her lips before. _She loved thisman_!--this mean wretch, who had lived upon her and betrayedher, and, having got from her all she had to give, was probablyjust about to cast her off into the abyss which yawns for suchwomen as Louie. He had thought of her flight to him before as thefrenzy of a nature which must have distraction at any cost from theunfamiliar and intolerable weight of natural grief. 

But this!--one moment it cut the roots from hope, the next itnerved him to more vigorous action. 

'You cannot have him, ' he said, steadily and sternly. 'I havelistened to the talk here for your sake--he is already on the pointof deserting you--everyone else in this place knows that he istired of you--that he is unfaithful to you. '

She dropped into her chair with a groan. Even her energies werespent--she was all but fainting--and her miserable heart knew, withmore certainty than David himself did, that all he said was true. 

Her unexpected weakness, the collapse of her strained nerves, filled him with fresh hopes. He came close to her again andpleaded, by the memory of her child, of their father--that shewould yield, and go away with him at once. 

'What should I do'--she broke in passionately, her sense ofopposition of absurdity reviving her, 'when I get to your hatefulManchester? Go to church and say my prayers! And you? In a week ortwo, I tell you, you would be sick of having soiled your hands withsuch _mud_ as I am. '

She threw herself back in her chair with a superb gesture, andfolded her arms, looking him defiance. 

'Try me, ' he said quietly, while his lip trembled. 'I am not as Iwas, Louie. There are things one can only learn by goingdown--down--into the depths of sorrow. The night before Lucydied--she could hardly speak--she sent you a message: "I wish I hadbeen kinder--ask her to come to Manchester when I am gone. " I havenot seen her die--not seen her whole life turn to love--throughsuch unspeakable suffering--for nothing. Oh Louie--when we submitourselves to God--when we ask for His life--and give up ourown--then, and then only, there is peace--and strength. Weourselves are nothing--creatures of passion--miserable--weak--butin Him and through Him--'

His voice broke. He took her cold hand and pressed it tenderly. Shetrembled in spite of herself, and closed her eyes. 

'_Don't_--I know all about that--why did the child die? Thereis no God--nothing. It's just talk. I told Him what I'd do--I vowedI'd go to the bad, for good and all--and I have. There--let mealone!'

But he only held her hand tighter. 

'No I--never! Your trouble was awful--it might well drive youmad. But others have suffered, Louie--no less--and yet havebelieved--have hoped. It is not beyond our power--for it has beendone again and again!--by the most weak, the most miserable. Oh!think of that--tear yourself first from the evil life--and you, too, will know what it is to be consoled--to be strengthened. Themere effort to come with me--I promise it you!--will bring youhealing and comfort. We make for ourselves the promise of eternallife, by turning to the good. Then the hope of recovering our dearones--which was nothing to us before--rises and roots itself in ourheart. Come with me, --conquer yourself, --let us begin to love eachother truly, give me comfort and yourself--and you will bear tothink again of Cecile and of God--there will be calm and peacebeyond this pain. '

His eyes shone upon her through a mist. She said no more for awhile. She lay exhausted and silent, the tears streaming once moredown her haggard cheeks. 

Then, thinking she had consented, he began to speak of arrangementsfor the journey--of the possibility of getting across the forest. 

Instantly her passion returned. She sprang up and put him away fromher. 

'It is ridiculous, I tell you--_ridiculous!_ How can I decidein such an instant? You must go away and leave me to think. '

'No, ' he said firmly, 'my only chance is to stay with you. '

She walked up and down, saying wild incoherent things to herselfunder her breath. She wore the red dress she had worn atManchester--now a torn and shabby rag--and over it, because of thecold, a long black cloak, a relic of better days. Her splendidhair, uncombed and dishevelled, hung almost loose round her headand neck; and the emaciation of face and figure made her height andslenderness more abnormal than ever as she swept tempestuously toand fro. 

At last she paused in front of him. 

'Well, I dare say I'll go with you, ' she said, with the oldreckless note. 'That fiend thinks he has me in his power for good, he amuses himself with threats of leaving _me_--perhaps I'llturn the tables.... But you must go--go for an hour. You canfind out about a carriage. There will be an old woman herepresently for the house-work. I'll get her to help me pack. You'llonly be in the way. '

'You'll be ready for me in an hour?' he said, rising reluctantly. 

'Well, it don't look, does it, as if there was much to pack in thishole!' she said with one of her wild laughs. 

He looked round for the first time and saw a long bare studio, containing a table covered with etcher's apparatus and some blocksfor wood engraving. There was besides an easel, and a picture uponit, with a pretentious historical subject just blocked in, a talloak chair and stool of antique pattern, and in one corner a standof miscellaneous arms such as many artists affect--an old flintlockgun or two, some Moorish or Spanish rapiers and daggers. The northwindow was half blocked by snow, and the atmosphere of the place, in spite of the stove, was freezing. 

He moved to the door, loth, most loth, to go, yet well aware, bylong experience, of the danger of crossing her temper or her whims. After all, it would take him some time to make his arrangementswith the landlord, and he would be back to the moment. 

She watched him intently with her poor red eyes. She herself openedthe door for him, and to his amazement put a sudden hand on hisarm, and kissed him--roughly, vehemently, with lips that burnt. 

'Oh, you fool!' she said, 'you fool!'

'What do you mean?' he said, stopping. 'I believe I _am_ afool, Louie, to leave you for a moment. '

'Nonsense! You are a fool to want to take me to Manchester, and Iam a fool to think of going. There:--if I had never been born!--oh!go, for God's sake, go! and come back in an hour. I _must_have some time, I tell you--' and she gave a passionate stamp--'tothink a bit, and put my things together. '

She pushed him out, and shut the door. With a great effort hemastered himself and went. 

He made all arrangements for the two-horse sledge that was to takethem to Fontainebleau. He called for his bill, and paid it. Then hehung about the entrance to the forest, looking with an unseeing eyeat the tricks which the snow had been playing with the trees, atthe gleams which a pale and struggling sun was shedding over thewhite world--till his watch told him it was time. 

He walked briskly back to the cottage, opened the outer door, wasastonished to hear neither voice nor movement, to see nothing ofthe charwoman Louie had spoken of--rushed to the studio andentered. 

She sat in the tall chair, her hands dropping over the arms, herhead hanging forward. The cold snow-light shone on her open andglazing eyes--on the red and black of her dress, on the life-streamdripping among the folds, on the sharp curved Algerian dagger ather feet. She was quite dead. Even in the midst of his words ofhope, the thought of self-destruction--of her mother--had come uponher and absorbed her. That capacity for sudden intolerable despairwhich she had inherited, rose to its full height when she haddriven David from her--guided her mad steps, her unshrinking hand. 

He knelt by her--called for help, laid his ear to her heart, herlips. Then the awfulness of the shock, and of his self-reproach, the crumbling of all his hopes, became too much to bear. Consciousness left him, and when the woman of whom Louie had spokendid actually come in, a few minutes later, she found the brotherlying against the sister's knee, his arms outstretched across her, while the dead Louie, with fixed and frowning brows, sat staringbeyond him into eternity--a figure of wild fate--freed at last andfor ever from that fierce burden of herself. 

EPILOGUE

_Alas!--Alas!_

--But to part from David Grieve under the impression of this sceneof wreck and moral defeat would be to misread and misjudge a life, destined, notwithstanding the stress of exceptional suffering itwas called upon at one time to pass through, to singularly rich andfruitful issues. Time, kind inevitable Time, dulled the paralysinghorror of his sister's death, and softened the memory of all thatlong torture of publicity, legal investigation, and the like, whichhad followed it. The natural healing 'in widest commonalty spread, 'which flows from affection, nature, and the direction of the mindto high and liberating aims, came to him also as the months andyears passed. His wife's death, his sister's tragedy, left indeedindelible marks; but, though scarred and changed, he was in the endneither crippled nor unhappy. The moral experience of life hadbuilt up in him a faith which endured, and the pangs of his ownpity did but bring him at last to rest the more surely on a pitybeyond man's. During the nights of semi-delirium which followed thescene at Barbizon, John, who watched him, heard him repeat againand again words which seemed to have a talismanic power over hisrestlessness. 'Neither do I condemn thee. Come, and sin no more. 'They were fragments dropped from what was clearly a nightmare ofanguish and struggle; but they testified to a set of character, they threw light on the hopes and convictions which ultimatelyrepossessed themselves of the sound man. 

Two years passed. It was Christmas Eve. The firm of Grieve & Co. InPrince's Street was shut for the holiday, and David Grieve, a mileor two away, was sitting over his study fire with a book. He closedit presently, and sat thinking. 

There was a knock at his door. When he opened it he found Doraoutside. It was Dora, in the quasi-sister's garb she had assumed oflate--serge skirt, long black cloak, and bonnet tied with whitemuslin strings under the throat. In her parish visiting among theworst slums of Ancoats, she had found such a dress useful. 

'I brought Sandy's present, ' she said, looking round hercautiously. 'Is his stocking hung up?'

'No! or the rascal would never go to sleep to-night. He is nearlywild about his presents as it is. Give it to me. It shall go intomy drawer, and I will arrange everything when I go to bedto-night. '

He looked at the puzzle-map she had brought with a childishpleasure, and between them they locked it away carefully in adrawer of the writing-table. 

'Do sit down and get warm, ' he said to her, pushing forward achair. 

'Oh no! I must go back to the church. We shall be decorating tilllate to-night. But I had to be in Broughton, so I brought this onmy way home. '

Then Sandy and I will escort you, if you will have us. He made mepromise to take him to see the shops. I suppose Market Street is asight. '

He went outside to shout to Sandy, who was having his tea, to getready, and then came back to Dora. She was standing by the firelooking at an engagement tablet filled with entries, on themantelpiece. 

'Father Russell says they have been asking you again to stand forParliament, ' she said timidly, as he came in. 

'Yes, there is a sudden vacancy. Old Jacob Cherritt is dead. '

'And you won't?'

He shook his head. 

'No, ' he said, after a pause. 'I am not their man; they would bealtogether disappointed in me. '

She understood the sad reverie of the face, and said no more. 

No. For new friends, new surroundings, efforts of another type, hispower was now irrevocably gone; he shrank more than ever from theegotisms of competition. But within the old lines he had recoveredan abundant energy. Among his workmen; amid the details nowfortunate, now untoward of his labours for the solution of certainproblems of industrial ethics; in the working of the remarkablepamphlet scheme dealing with social and religious fact, which wasfast making his name famous in the ears of the England which thinksand labours; and in the self-devoted help of the unhappy, --he wasdeveloping more and more the idealist's qualities, and here andthere--inevitably--the idealist's mistakes. His face, as middlelife was beginning to shape it--with its subtle and sensitivebeauty--was at once the index of his strength and his limitations. 

He and Dora stood talking a while about certain public schemes thatwere in progress for the bettering of Ancoats. Then he said withsudden emphasis:

_'Ah!_ if one could but jump a hundred years and see whatEngland will be like! But these northern towns, and this northernlife, on the whole fill one with hope. There is a strong socialspirit and strong individualities to work on. '

Dora was silent. From her Churchwoman's point of view the prospectwas not so bright. 

'Well, people seem to think that co-operation is going to doeverything, ' she said vaguely. 

'We all cry our own nostrums, ' he said, laughing; 'what co-operationhas done up here in the north is wonderful! It has been the makingof thousands. But the world is not going to give itself over whollyto committees. There will be room enough for the one-man-power atany rate for generations to come. What we want is leaders; butleaders who will feel themselves "members of one body, " instrumentsof one social order. '

They stood together a minute in silence; then he went out to thestairs and called: 'Sandy, you monkey, come along!'

Sandy came shouting and leaping downstairs, as lithe and handsomeas ever, and as much of a compound of the elf and the philosopher. 

'I _know_ Auntie Dora's brought me a present, ' he said, looking up into her face, --'but father's locked it up!'

David chased him out of doors with contumely, and they all took thetram to Victoria Street. 

Once there, Sandy was in the seventh heaven. The shops were ablazewith lights, and gay with every Christmas joy; the pavements werecrowded with a buying and gaping throng. He pulled at his father'shand, exclaiming here and pointing there, till David, draggedhither and thither, had caught some of the boy's mirth andpleasure. 

But Dora walked apart. Her heart was a little heavy and dull, herface weary. In reality, though David's deep and tender gratitudeand friendship towards her could not express themselves too richly, she felt, as the years went on, more and more divided from him andSandy. She was horrified at the things which David published, orsaid in public; she had long dropped any talk with the child on allthose subjects which she cared for most. Young as he was, the boyshowed a marvellous understanding in some ways of his father'smind, and there were moments when she felt a strange and dumbirritation towards them both. 

Christmas too, in spite of her Christian fervour, had always itssadness for her. It reminded her of her father, and of theloneliness of her personal life. 

'How father would have liked all this crowd!' she said once toDavid as they passed into Market Street. 

David assented with instant sympathy, and they talked a little ofthe vanished wanderer as they walked along, she with a yearningpassion which touched him profoundly. 

He and Sandy escorted her up the Ancoats High Street, and at lastthey turned into her own road. Instantly Dora perceived a littlecrowd round her door, and, as soon as she was seen, a waving ofhands, and a Babel of voices. 

'What is it?' she cried, paling, and began to run. 

David and Sandy followed. She had already flown upstairs; but theshawled mill-girls, round the door, flushed with excitement, shouted their news into his ear. 

'It's her feyther, sir, as ha coom back after aw these years--anhe's sittin by the fire quite nat'ral like, Mary Styles says--andthey put him in a mad-house in furrin parts, they did--an hishair's quite white--an oh! sir, yo mun just goo up an look. '

Pushed by eager hands, and still holding Sandy, David, though halfunwilling, climbed the narrow stairs. 

The door was half open. And there, in his old chair, sat Daddy, hissnow-white hair falling on his shoulders, a childish excitement anddelight on his blanched face. Dora was kneeling at his feet, herhead on his knees, sobbing. 

David took Sandy up in his arms. 

'Be quiet, Sandy; don't say a word. '

And he carried him downstairs again, and into the midst of theeager crowd. 

'I think, ' he said, addressing them, 'I would go home if I wereyou--if you love her. '

They looked at his shining eyes and twitching lips, and understood. 

'Aye, sir, aye, sir, yo're abeawt reet--we'st not trouble her, sir. '

He carried his boy home, Sandy raining questions in a tumult ofexcitement. Then when the child was put to bed he sat on in hislonely study, stirred to his sensitive depths by the thought ofDora's long waiting and sad sudden joy--by the realisation of theChristmas crowds and merriment--by the sharp memory of his owndead. Towards midnight, when all was still, he opened the lockeddrawer which held for him the few things which symbolised andsummed up his past--a portrait of Lucy, by the river under thetrees, taken by a travelling photographer, not more than six weeksbefore her death--a little collection of pictures of Sandy frombabyhood onwards--Louie's breviary--his father's dying letter--abook which had belonged to Ancrum, his vanished friend. But thoughhe took thence his wife's picture, communing awhile, in a passionof yearning, with its weary plaintive eyes, he did not allowhimself to sink for long into the languor of memory and grief. Heknew the perils of his own nature, and there was in him a sternsense of the difficulty of living aright, and the awfulness of theclaim made by God and man on the strength and will of theindividual. It seemed to him that he had been 'taught of God'through natural affection, through repentance, through sorrow, through the constant energies of the intellect. Never had theDivine voice been clearer to him, or the Divine Fatherhood morereal. Freely he had received--but only that he might freely give. On this Christmas night he renewed every past vow of the soul, andin so doing rose once more into that state and temper which isman's pledge and earnest of immortality--since already, here andnow, it is the eternal life begun. 

THE END