THE ROMANCE OF

ZION CHAPEL

By

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

1898

TO

TWO IN HEAVEN

AND

TWO ON EARTH. 

Contents

I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMESII. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIALIII. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRITIV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLYV. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALSVI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMENVII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER. VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTERIX. "THE DAWN"X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTERXI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNYXII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZIONXIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGEXIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFEXV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWERXVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIMEXVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE. .. "XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARSXIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESSXX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIESXXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOUREDXXII. THE TRYST LETHEANXXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATEXXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNYXXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTEXXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNYXXVII. ISABEL CALLINGXXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACEXXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST

The Romance of Zion Chapel

CHAPTER I

OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES

On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town therestands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region ofdisappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railwayembankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirelyobscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do dutyfor a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptlypresent unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with thegasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boastingthe best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, isproudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied thegasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, yet long since drearily old, --with the unattractive antiquity of oldiron and old clothes, --round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can onlydescribe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased inweather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words"New Zion, " and the streets about it are named accordingly: ZionPassage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too whichhad been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning beforethe house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion Viewlived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawingpillar of New Zion, --on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call. 

A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to aromance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are thereader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the LadyRomance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary, soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in, on a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and aspring wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise, --these are her verysoul. Dull places and bright people, --these she loves to bring together, and watch for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, andthe place to seek her is never the place where she was last found. 

Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you arerespectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with ashrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes ofone of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won'tpretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes ofthat great, sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of wearyrain that set someone quoting, --also in that street, --

 "Il pleure dans mon coeur Comme il pleut sur la ville. "

Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New Zion. Actually. 

Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles ofGreece!

CHAPTER II

INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL

That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest lightin the contrast which it was the happy business of TheophilusLondonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make inthe vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchesterat large. 

Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's solike the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for, that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it forpurposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for itsreminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the moresuitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhapsrather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions, --or sayone was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call. " By day heprofessed to be a clerk in a cotton-office, --and he was no fool at that(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but bynight, and occasionally of an afternoon, --when he got leave of absenceto solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral, --he was a spiritualpastor, the young father of his flock. 

Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject ofNonconformity, its influence on individualities and its directrelationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome, --thoughhe sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter, --TheophilusLondonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would havefound no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could notlong have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was thenon-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity thatgave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of apersonal force that claimed operation in some human employment, somework not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man, and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth orinfluence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the artof Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for thisNonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity. 

This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by noremoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he wasnot the business manager of a large hardware store, --a lay-preacher witha very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and afailure all in one. 

I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to bea good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights ofblessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fightingquality, --a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the handof strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had madehimself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that hewas conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--werequalifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, hewould occasionally "supply, " they had passed into his son, and met inhim other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a loveof laughter, and a mighty humanity. 

Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape andpartly something bigger and more effectively vital. 

At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was saidto have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of abig political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastorat New Zion. 

This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall notattempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance ofChristian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if hecould have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered thepoint as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered interms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. Hewould, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, butthat pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, andhumanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whateverthe apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderrythat poorest of all God's creatures, --a hypocrite. However you may judgehim, you must never make that mistake about him. 

CHAPTER III

OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT

New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. Thefiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since diedout of it. Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from aflourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed andgleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots whocarried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had beenpoor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in iteven a spark. 

Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away. Adwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept itsdoors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in itsmusty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesdayprayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New lifefrom the outside must come, and speedily, or it must die. 

But new life was already on the way. On the town side the sad streetsround New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and indeedZion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovialand ruddy shop--a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli Moggridge. Thename did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanicalsanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddypersonality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and ofwhom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberantprosperity, was a much more truthful expression. Well, the business wasgrowing with such gusto that Mr. Moggridge felt he might afford a homeaway from his shop, and thus he came to take the biggish empty housewhich presently put on new paint and once more seemed quite proud ofbeing "Zion View. "

Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. Had "attended" elsewhere, but he was notso young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy approachof comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel wasrather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his housebeing called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligationtowards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanlyabove the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express itin just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of hisbeing the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him. 

Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a successfulman of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to carry it out, asgoods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge's shop, with despatch. Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge's mind had, allunconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call the NewSpirit. The new spirit of any age works its way even into itsbusinesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn't have so described it, itwas the "New Spirit" that had made the success of his provision shop. Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it "new blood. "He meant the "New Spirit;" and it was in reply to his advertisement fora new pastor, that the "New Spirit" in the person of TheophilusLondonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion. 

CHAPTER IV

ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY

Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry ata glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he likedEli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met. 

You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon youcouldn't help respecting him, --Theophilus Londonderry was almost to knowwhat it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man hewas was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chiefdeacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be nolittle of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of adifferent character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindranceas he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreativerather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort ofSunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. Hewanted to see it a "going concern, " and, hating stagnation in hisneighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust tomake it move and hum and whizz. 

Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, withfurther mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, heexplained to the young minister at supper after the close of an eveningservice which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was notDogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man inhis business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; andit happened that something of this very sort was what TheophilusLondonderry was eagerly prepared to supply. 

The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridgeguaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broadgeneral principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to beplaced either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of thefaith that was in him. "All we want you to do, " he said in conclusion, "is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you doit, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you inthat than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of Yorkhams. We must all be specialists nowadays, --specialists, " repeated Mr. Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets. 

So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor, "presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the fadeddusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at toogreat a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some niceold-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane. 

I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love herlittle daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describethem at too great a length. Old Mr. And Mrs. Talbot were the solesurvivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantlypious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in nosense dialectical, and in every sense harmless. 

Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when frontparlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting inthe kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "likewhite-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone. " It is not recorded that he everthought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He wouldflee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such fromthe wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically, and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. Itdisconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered inhis mouth, --for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise. 

Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in animmeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the littlethinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, paythe rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny'smarriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a preciousteapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefullywrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had aheart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her witheredold apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonnyand red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good dealdeaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, asshe had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was veryold, and she, I know, was very wise. 

Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyondthat she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her, was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by theschool-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress andpocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. Nolover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterfulsuperscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very prettyor very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet onlybeginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn'tpretty yet, but she wasn't plain. 

Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it, there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince!That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course, though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to thetask of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession ofchapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates. " Ofcourse, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginningto wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to growmerry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses. 

Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merelyto save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester thatTheophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any otherpurpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take thatfor granted as we begin the next chapter. 

CHAPTER V

OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS

There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the wayof the Hebrew prophet, --to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderryinstinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightilyupon New Zion. 

The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but itis gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo!it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words. The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in theprecious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material tomould, --an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not aprecious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay, --aclay not without streaks of gold. 

What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his willtowards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit wasmoving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himselfby means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to setit dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in goldon Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smiletoo. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows towhat coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality wouldcircle on before they touched the shores of death?

We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity inoccasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to suchwe gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in anygiven thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be yourcalculation for the average of such divine, --how many faces would youfall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how manyhearts would you dare to trust?

Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checkedby the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay. 

Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to beminted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its ownimage; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, thatthe artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashesof faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifsand strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with whata thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth!

Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed againand again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of yourimage. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, theimpression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowdswhen he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a likecombination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed, even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, assoon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramblefor hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see, the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvasitself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration!

But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of theministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the NewZioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artisticmaterials had not only to be preached and prayed to, --they had to be ina measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individuallyconsidered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed tobe set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made helpin the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest youneeded and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken thesingle gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the foolwisely, --that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. Toencourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talentshe has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr. Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayermeetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures werereally and usefully alive, but at no other point of theircircumferences. 

However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the ReverendTheophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a loverof character for its own sake, and to the student of character there isno such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisomean old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord inprayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imaginesthat to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith. 

Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderrybreathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, accordingto his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he wasthere, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlesslybeaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't Isay he was the man for New Zion?"

The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the olddisused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time everypossible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance, prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcassociety, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and theladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zionhad indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and socialactivities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almostbeginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as EliMoggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed ofthe whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, tillnot merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Streetheard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very HighStreet itself should hum and whizz. 

The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of TheophilusLondonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon behumming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of theever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, andthe world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit willwhirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of TheophilusLondonderry. 

Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. 

CHAPTER VI

OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN

Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeableanimals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism toenvironment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if hehad begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history hasbeen one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations!

Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it isperhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being. Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of therock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course, she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to alike degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one ofthe forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is notbecoming to him. 

For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by astronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength. 

Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of animpression, --something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never bearthe stamp of power, --it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather becausewoman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of anyform of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose imageshe wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels theveritable grasp and impress of power. Some women are already made in theimage of the man they are to love before they meet him. Very wonderful, very terrible, then, is the meeting, and it is a meeting that usuallycomes too late. But oftener God gives a man a little measure ofporcelain and a handful of stars, and leaves him to make the woman heneeds for himself; and very wonderful too is that making, --though theman will always have been the father before he was the lover. 

Why, one may ponder, should a man who is great enough to mould a womanto help him be great, not be great enough to do without her at all? Letlovers of the unfathomable ask at the same time: Why is man, man? andwoman, woman? and what are both?

This gentle doll with the sweet breath, which he nips up in his arms andkisses, and gives a tongue that she may talk back to him his own words, endows with brains that she may think his thoughts, --a quaint littlehelpless lovely parody of his wisdom and power; a toy, yes; arefreshment, yes; a place of peace, yes, --but how much more! Yes, moreby all that we don't understand when we say "woman. "

Why a great man should need, not a great woman, but a little woman, avery little woman, --how is it to be explained, unless it be that woman, however little, is mysteriously great, just because she is a woman, alittle woman? Unknown properties were wrapped up somewhere in thatporcelain; to press it with the lips is to feel strange virtue cominginto one, --the devil was in those stars. 

Great men are only nourished on the elements. Woman is an element, allthe elements in one, --earth, air, fire, and water, met together in arose. She is a spring among the rocks, and she comes up dimpling fromthe roots of the world. She is just as simple and just as strange. O!little shining spring of woman that is called Jenny, a great man mustdraw up through you the unfathomed, deep strengths of the old world. Hebends above you and drinks, and as he drinks, his face is mirroredin yours. 

"Jenny, I don't think I'd read 'Miss ----, ' if I were you, " would saythe great man. 

"No, dear?" So Jenny was presently reading Ruskin instead, and wonderinghow she could ever have read "Miss ----. " And deep in her dear heart shewas saying, "Of course not; great men's wives never read 'Miss ----. '"

And yet had the great man said, "Read Gaboriau instead, "--as a certainvery great man does, --Jenny's heart would have said, "Of course, greatmen's wives always read Gaboriau. "

No! great men's wives read "Sesame and Lilies, " and "Sartor Resartus, "and "Marius the Epicurean, " and "Richard Feverel, " and "VirginibusPuerisque, "--they even try to read Newman's "Apologia. " Such were thebooks on the sunnier side of Theophilus Londonderry's little library inNo. 3 Zion Place. In dark corners behind easy-chairs were the deep-seapools of theology, --pools which had long since given up all the fishthey had in them for their owner, --slabs of antique divinity, such asyou would find likewise in the equally cherished library ofLondonderry Senior. 

Such were the fathers that slumbered on in a well-earned repose, andwhich, far from desiring new readers, were so old that they were glad torest undisturbed, --being far too self-important to confuse a considerateregard for their repose with neglect. And many of them were really quitevaluable as decoration, because of their fine old coats of gildedleather; and such were ranged in the more penetrable shadows or even inthe lamp-light. Theophilus would point to them as to a portrait-galleryof dead ancestors. One might admire the quaint and distinguished cut oftheir clothes without dreaming of wearing the same, --and indeed olddivinity, he used to say, was poor food for young divines. 

His divinity indeed was fed on the technical side, it is to be feared, by the more destructive biblical criticism, like most destructiveengines, coming all the way from Germany, and at its more vital centresby importations of strong meat from Russia and Scandinavia. Tolstoi andIbsen were his archprophets. 

There was likewise a great Paris moralist called Zola, and a strange oldAmerican father called Walt Whitman. And beauty, that can never be faraway from strength, found many new and wonderful prophets in that littlelibrary, --poets and painters and musicians of whom hardly anyone else inCoalchester had yet heard, and certainly no one above the age oftwenty-five. 

Surely youth is in nothing more marvellous than in its mysterious powerof attracting to itself into the most out-of-the-way places thesustenance and companionship it needs. In the unlikeliest wildernessinspired youth is never without the mysteriously-brought food and thecompany of angels. Powers of the air will sweep across continents torescue it from prison, soft gales travel from south to north to sowseeds of beauty in its narrow ways, and little songs will flutter likebutterflies for hundreds of miles to cheer its heart. 

The Time-Spirit had given its angels charge concerning these youngpeople, and, remote as they were from all the fiery centres of thoughtand the dreaming schools of art, Zion Place, no less than the Rue deRivoli, took its thought of the newest and its beauty of the best. 

CHAPTER VII

THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER

I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town. I did notmean to imply that there were no M. A. 's there. In fact, there were quitea number. You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life hadits representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual deathhad its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply thatthe M. A. 's were dead M. A. 's, dead and buried with Latin over them in theold brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it washardly less conceited than a cathedral. Spiritual and intellectual deathin Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literaryand Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retainingits adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions, " which seemedmainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paperon fossils. 

Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its realinterest in the antediluvian and prehistoric. For the life that was deadit had a perfect passion, and it sometimes held conversaziones to gazeat it through microscopes. Occasionally it would waken up to literaturewith a paper on Akenside. In everything that didn't in the least mattersome of these mild old gentlemen were genuinely learned. Not that theyhadn't read the great poets, even in the original Greek, Latin, andItalian. Poets in dead and foreign languages were a form of fossils, andEnglish poets--with that divine bloom upon them!--they had a way offossilising by spectacles, so that they never read them alive. Thus theyhad never read Shakespeare even in the original. 

Once, long ago in Coalchester, a hundred years ago, there had been alittle circle of elegant literati, connoisseurs of literature andart, --men, so far as men of that age might be, genuinely, if timidly andold-maidishly, affectionate towards belles-lettres; men who had got sofar as to appreciate the freshness of an Elizabethan song; minor BishopsPercy; and such lavender is the true love of anything that theirmemories still hung about the walls of the old Lyceum along with theirportraits; while so necessary are great names for little towns to boastof, that the compiler of the local gazetteer implied that Coalchesterglowed at night with quite a lustre from their names. Besides, theyproved very useful in damping young men. And yet you wouldn't know theirnames if I were to write them--as I would rather like to do. 

The learned Dr. Sibley, he wrote a pleasant little essay on "Taste, " youknow, with a few additional notes on chiaroscuro; and then there wasthe learned Dr. Ambrose, who wrote quite a pretty little treatise onSong-writing. 

No! Of course you won't know any of them. Yet they were all once, andare still, "The Learned. " You'll never hear Theophilus Londonderryspoken of as that, I'm afraid. 

As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a greatname to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendantsare not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than theoriginal great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of themembers of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in directratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and thelearned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something aboutart and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons ofsuch consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless, and who certainly knew nothing about either. 

One of the real objects of this sad little Society was passionately toignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true thatthere was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recordedto their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderryhis chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, hesuddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitationread something like a command, and there seemed to be an implicationthat if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right ofacknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society ofCoalchester. 

Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman, "--a namewhich conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason thatit conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the youngman to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that hadspoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to givehis paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice, and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes throughthe old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n. "

Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled afuneral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of deadlearning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an expressionthat I can only compare to buttered rolls. He was just three hundredyears old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so) ranfrom a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present besides thelecturer were two friends of his I have yet to introduce, --RobClitheroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many ambitions, andJames Whalley (little James Whalley he was always called) a gentle loverof letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in the whole littlecoterie; _and_ Mr. Moggridge, --not entirely comfortable, it having beenby some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him that he was atradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt a certaintraditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners. A quiterecent ancestor had refused to pay tithes. That ancestor was in hisblood to-night. 

Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of theSociety, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning, occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings, --matterswhich never came out in the "Transactions. "

The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman'swritings and doctrines, with extracts from "The Leaves of Grass;" andfrom beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularlyduring one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the buttered-rollexpression had faded from the Canon's face, and his "our young friend"expression was ready for the chairman's remarks. Londonderry's sittingdown awakened a few sad echoes that were no doubt hand-clappings, butseemed like the napping of the wings of night-birds frightened by alight. But the Lit-and-Phils were not frightened; they were entirelybewildered and rather indignant, that was all. It was characteristic oftheir incapacity to grasp the humanity of any subject, even when it wasdangerous, that the criticism which followed was directed almostentirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This was not poetry! Hadnot their revered founder, the learned Dr. Ambrose . .. 

The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the localnewspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob Clitheroe, who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to theCoalchester "Argus" were in his opinion better poetry than anything WaltWhitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance withWalt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment sent theblood to young Clitheroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever that hewould never be a real poet, --though, as a matter of fact, he had writtensome quite pretty lines. 

It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could takeseriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four beneaththe stars, --Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now and again, like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young minister'sbrilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind. 

Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of asilence: "Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance toCoalchester?"

"Capital!" cried Londonderry; "come in for a bit of supper, all of you, and let us talk over the plan of campaign. "

CHAPTER VIII

THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER

Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had anexcellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of oldMrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronologicalmethod of remembering great occasions and startling events by the foodof the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill withtears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how heronly boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at hisworkshop, she would fix the date by saying, "It was about six o'clock atnight, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking foryour father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door . .. "Sometimes it was, "I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish, " orit would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, thatmarked the day. 

The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as Ihave said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood thesignificance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasionalbobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doingjustice to her food, --she had a curious notion that young men never ateenough, --she would hear snatches of what she called "deep talk, " orshake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored andmothered, with a "Law! what a boy it is!" She wasn't quite suresometimes as to the soundness of his "doctrine, " but wisely decided thather business was rather with his stomach than his brains, --which nodoubt God Almighty would look after for himself. 

Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest toCoalchester wits and their butts, so I shall not record the bright andanimated talk which helped to digest Mrs. Talbot's rabbit-pie, butconfine myself to a practical outcome of it. 

What interests me specially about these young men was their rarepracticality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, withideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, theywere, --otherwise there had been no point in their being practical, --butthey were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best goton to the market of realities. 

Characteristically, it was the poet of the party from whom the mostpractical suggestion came. In itself, of course, there was no greatoriginality in the idea of a weekly paper to be called "The Dawn, "devoted to the dissemination of the new light on every possiblesubject, --politics and municipal misgovernment; the new social ideals;the newest and most delicate forms of art, music, and literature. Itwas in the suggested method of publication and circulation that theoriginality lay. The paper was to be given away and made to pay itsexpenses by tradesmen's advertisements, a guarantee of a certain minimumdistribution being given. This method had, of course, been tried beforefor purposes of mere publicity, but never, I think, for thedissemination of truth and beauty. The truth about life was to be paidfor by lies about bacon and butter, --or, let us say, businessexaggerations rendered innocuous by custom, and therefore as harmlessas truth. 

Obviously Mr. Moggridge, who not unnaturally had felt a sense of movingabout in worlds not realised during much of the deep talk, was here anauthority of importance, and the idea at once appealed to him. He wouldpromise a permanent advertisement, and he even promised illustrations, in the form of blocks already engraved and occasionally used by the"Argus, " of the flourishing shops at 33, 34, 35 High Street, and 58, 59Zion Street. He had also some blocks of gigantic hams most hammilypictured, which might also be of use, and he would also be able to bringin a number of his fellow tradesmen. Invaluable Mr. Moggridge! What weretruth without you!

The poet, on his part, guaranteed to supply all the poetry that might berequired, and indeed agreed to do special rhyming advertisements, at, say, half a guinea apiece. He would also assist Londonderry in thepolitical and municipal departments, not only in the higher flights, butlend a hand even in castigations of local jobs, abuses, and absurdities. 

Gentle James Whalley would write round-about essays, for which he had acharming gift, and generally take in charge the aesthetic interests ofthe paper, though, as all were lovers of art and literature, thosesubjects would be handled now by one and now by another. Even Jenny wasto have her place on the staff, and write dress articles, which wouldnot only tend to improve the aspect of Coalchester streets, but attractmillinery advertisements. She already announced the title of her firstarticle, which was very grand: "Dress as a form of self-expression. "

It was two in the morning before the proceedings terminated, and eventhen good old Mrs. Talbot was still up to press steaming bumpers of veryhot whisky and water upon the wayfarers; "to keep the cold out, " sheexplained--though I need hardly say that the project had not waited tillthat hour to be suitably recommended to the god of all enterprises. 

CHAPTER IX

"THE DAWN. "

Next to the delight of holding new and unpopular opinions is the delightof having a medium for their unedited expression, though this is adelight given to few reformers. "The Dawn, " however, was to be such amedium; and when the first number appeared, as it did nearly a monthfrom the meeting recorded in the last chapter, four people, nay, five--for we mustn't forget Mr. Moggridge--were supremely happy. Withthe exception of the poet, who, as we have seen, occasionally irradiatedthe poet's corner of the "Argus, " and Mr. Moggridge, it was a firstappearance in print for three out of the five contributors; and thougheach talked most of the articles by the others, they were secretlylonging to get away with the little paper to some corner where theycould gloat over their own special contribution. 

Not that they had any ridiculous ideas of the literary importance of thearticles in question, but because it seemed so strange to see the warmwords of their mouths thus condensed into cold print, so strange tothink that people all over Coalchester were reading them. Little Jennyin particular felt quite a cold but pleasant shiver of notoriety as shethought of it, while to her lover the delighted perusal and reperusal ofa large-type leading article, headed "In Darkest Coalchester!" brought anew sense of power. 

The poet, as was only to be expected, had his little grievance with theprinter, who, in spite of all his remonstrances and corrections inproof, --the printer was a little wrong-headed Scotchman, --had insistedat the last moment in heading his Tyrtean "Proem, " a fine aerialtrumpet-blast somewhat Shelleyan in style, with the word that wasevidently intended, namely, "Poem. " However, he was somewhat consoled byreading his caustic column of notes headed "The World outsideCoalchester, " the very heading of which was a revelation. Then, too, hevery much enjoyed his article on "Bad Lighting in Coalchester, " with itsevident allegoric insinuation that Coalchester needed lighting in moreways than one, and that "The Dawn" was prepared to undertake, free ofcharge, the top-lighting of which it was most in need. 

James Whalley contributed a review of "Mr. Swinburne's new Poems, "through which article Mr. Moggridge's illustrated hams plainly showedfrom the other side. 

New truth is too often printed in very worn-out type, but the promotersof "The Dawn" had wisely remembered how hard truth is to read, and hadgiven it good clear type, and generally made it a very comely andattractive little paper. It bore a motto that sounded almost like athreat, "We come to stay, "--a boast which it manfully kept for severalyears. As I lift my eyes from this paper, they rest on no less than tengreat half-yearly volumes, which flash "The Dawn"--"The Dawn"--along adarksome folio shelf, as they have flashed it week after week acrossdarkest Coalchester; and "The Dawn" ceased, at length, not from lack ofpower and encouragement to continue, but because the world had grownsadder by then, and it had lost the will to go on living. 

In spite of this hardy existence, I suppose "The Dawn" will win norecord of itself in the histories of the press, though merely asspirited journalism it deserves to do so; while in the history of thehuman spirit at Coalchester it demands a grateful celebration such as itwill, again, most surely not receive from the literary and philosophicalhistorian of the town. At all events, honoured or forgotten as it maybe, should you ever come across its strange young pages, I know you willagree with me that it was a wonderful little paper. It was not, you maysuspect, conservative, being, as it was, very alive and very young. Infact, its radiant radicalism brings tears to one's eyes to-day, when somany of the noble ideals it championed, to the length and strength ofits little angry arm, are lying smashed beneath the iron blows of thecapitalism that has outlived even the noble eloquence of TheophilusLondonderry. 

Like all young people, it was all for the young, the new; and I thinkyou will be astonished, if you do ever turn over its pages, at theremarkable instinct for the crescent life possessed by these young men;and, were it worth while, I could easily prove that several of the moreexquisite continental writers, now the fashion this many a year, firstfound a humble welcome in that quaint little organ of New Zion. 

Yes! it was a triumph for New Zion too. This modest and hitherto obscurecorner of the town suddenly found itself, comparatively, in a blaze ofpublicity, for a column headed "Work at New Zion, " evidently meant to beweekly, left no doubt from what quarter of the town the dawn was to belooked for. This was perhaps the most delightful thing about thepaper, --its calm assumption that the real aristocracy of the town was tobe found in that little back street, and that, if Coalchester was tohave any spiritual or intellectual life, it must seek it there. In ZionStreet, and nowhere else in Coalchester, were the angels descending intothe waters. And the best part of the joke was that the assumption wasliterally true. 

CHAPTER X

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER

Coalchester was too much taken by surprise by "The Dawn" to pretend toignore it, and its first recognition was appropriately made in aludicrously abusive article in "The Argus, "--"the one-eyed Argus, " as itwas mockingly nicknamed in the next week's issue of the new paper. Thejoke was one that was lost on Coalchester, which had never dreamed ofexpecting a hundred eyes in its "Argus, " which to it was but the usualname for a sleeping newspaper. It was, however, to do them justice, seenand chuckled over by one or two members of the Literary andPhilosophical Society. "The young beggars know their--classicaldictionary, at all events, " said one of them maliciously, which wasquite bright for a Lit-and-Phil. 

One tangible result of the little paper was the almost immediatedoubling of the attendance at New Zion. Curiosity had been aroused inthis militant young minister with the strange ideas, and TheophilusLondonderry wished for nothing better than to gratify it. In the oxygenof success even the dullest metals will scintillate, and it needed butsuch small beginnings of his future to make Theophilus as nearlyirresistible as natural gifts and success together can make a man. 

Some people go to chapel to worship, a few to learn, but most, odd as itmay sound, to be entertained. A vivid and magnetic preacher is as nearas many will allow themselves to approach the theatre. Theophilus was aborn actor--of himself; a part so few can or dare play. He gave you goodstimulating truth; but it was not so much in the newness of the ideaswhich he passed on from his books to his hearers, as in the newness ofhimself, that of course the charm lay. A few people, not many orimportant, disliked him; but all had to listen, and a good many came toNew Zion again. Above all, the women heard him gladly; and to this suresign of a future Theophilus was far from blind. "He has women at hisback, he cannot fail, " was a phrase he sometimes recalled out of hisfavourite _Brand_. Yes, and had he not one little angel-woman athis side?

It had been the spring of 1886 when he came to New Zion. It was now theautumn, and early in September announcements had been made of a seriesof autumnal lectures to be given by the Rev. Theophilus Londonderry; RobClitheroe, Esquire; James Whalley, Esquire; and other distinguishedlecturers, at New Zion. 

In the list were papers on "The Duty of Novel Reading, " "Henrik Ibsen, ""A Morris Wall-Paper, " "The Nude in Art, " and "The Darwinian Theory, "by Mr. Londonderry himself; "Coalchester, its Past and its Future, " byMr. Rob Clitheroe; together with "Ireland's Sacred Right to Home Rule, "by the same lecturer; "Wagner and the New Music, " by Mr. James Whalley, with a paper on "Some Really New Books, " by the same; and a paper-on"Good Taste in Dress, " by Miss Jenny Talbot--the virago!

The batteries were to be turned on poor Coalchester with a vengeance. For some time past there had been uneasy suspicions in the town thatstrange and somewhat ungodly forms of new learning and beauty were beingstored as in an arsenal in that little house at 3 Zion Place. A largecast of the Venus of Milo, it was known, had come from Covent Garden, London, _via_ a poor little dealer in artistic materials in the town, who on one occasion had shown a bewildering picture to one of hiscustomers with the remark, "What do you make of this, Mr. Littlejohn?"

Mr. Littlejohn could make nothing of it, nor indeed could the artists'colourman, who had been used to pictures all his life. 

No wonder, for it was the first Rossetti that had ever been seen inCoalchester. 

And it was the same at the little paperhanger's shop where Theophilushad ordered some pieces of Morris wall-paper for his room. 

"Law! what a taste, to be sure!" had exclaimed the paperhanger's wife asthey opened the parcel. "How any one dare live with such patterns isbeyond me. " The paperhanger's wife verbed better than she knew. Few arethose indeed who dare live with beauty. 

When the paper was hung in Theophil's room, so great was the sensationin the household that even old Mr. Talbot ventured to look in at it, keeping very close to his wife. It was so the old man had stoodopen-mouthed before the first steam-engine, and here again was the Devilplainly at work. 

"Lord a-mercy, Jane, " he said to his wife, "what is the world comingto?"

The world was indeed changing beneath the old man's feet, and theheavens opening as never before in his time--with, he might be right, some assistance from beneath; and--it was undoubtedly safer inthe kitchen. 

Mrs. Talbot in these matters lived and loved by faith in her boy, as shecalled him. But even she had her doubts, which she expressed in a waythat showed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sortof blind insight. 

"I suppose it's all right, boy, " she said, "and it sounds silly to sayabout a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your oldmother that there's something wrong about that paper, --something almostwicked in it. It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are sofond of playing. "

Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked herwith playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same. For the musicshe had referred to was Dvorak. 

CHAPTER XI

A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY

Meanwhile, as New Zion moved and hummed and whizzed, and as "The Dawn"went on dawning week by week, --you couldn't expect the dawn oftener thanonce a week in Coalchester, --the love of Jenny and Theophil grew moreand more perfect. 

There was a long while to wait yet before Jenny was to bear what seemedto her the finest of all names, for old Mrs. Talbot, easily manageableas a rule, had a way of quietly putting her foot down on occasion thatwould have surprised you. Jenny was only just passed nineteen, and wasno fit wife for any man yet, least of all for a great sprawling fellowlike that. Let her get a little more flesh on her bones, something morethan all spirit and nerves, let her get well turned twenty, and it mightbe thought of, but not now. 

No! it's no use coming with your nonsense, you silly big fellow! Youknow when the soft old mother says a thing, she means it. 

So it proved. Old Mrs. Talbot on this point remained a homely form ofadamant. However, the lovers were not badly off. Living in the samehouse, they saw almost as much of each other as if they had beenmarried, and from the evenings she spent there, Jenny had come to regardTheophil's room and his books as hers too. 

She had developed wonderfully in these months, had Jenny. She was a reallittle great man's wife now; and as Theophil looked at her, with her liteager face, her whole soul so alive to help him in however humble a way, her whole life his, his, his, --such love seemed almost tragic in itsvery beauty and joy. It was so irremediably--love. At times he almosttrembled before it. He would almost chide her with its divinecompleteness. 

What if he were to be taken from her? Oughtn't she to keep just a littleof herself for foothold? We ought all to belong to ourselves as well asto another. It was such a risk. Suppose he were to die, Jenny!

No doubt it was very wise, but Jenny was wiser. She could never belongto herself again. She was his, and his only, for ever; and if hedied--if he were to be taken away . .. 

But he could never be taken from her any other way? No one else, nothingbut death, could take him . .. 

"No, nothing but death--and perhaps not even death. "

"You are sure, darling? O, you are quite, quite sure?"

"Sure from my soul, little child. Look in it and see. "

A lover's eyes are his soul. 

Yes, Theophil loved Jenny, loved her even more with her own dependenceon love than he knew of. He was, the reader need scarcely be told, analmost wildly ambitious man, and a few months ago he would have saidthat there was nothing which was more to him than the expression of thepower that was in him. But there was something that was even more to himnow, and if it could be imagined that he might some day be asked tochoose between his ambition and Jenny, he could honestly have answeredfrom his soul, "Give me Jenny. "

Whoever thinks this an easily natural answer to make, may know somethingabout love, but evidently knows little about ambition. Still, lifeseldom sets us such silly examination questions as that, and need onesay that that question was never put to Jenny's lover? He was far tooproud of the woman he had made of that little measure of porcelain andthat handful of stars. 

CHAPTER XII

HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION

The winter months had gone by; all but one of those incendiary lectureshad been given, not without storm and tempest; "The Dawn" still came upeach week with anger and singing, and the first year of Londonderry'sministry at New Zion neared its close. The lecture season was presentlyto end, on the last Friday in March, with a concert which was to includea series of recitations by a lady-reciter from London. Londonderry hadwritten to a lecture agency for the name of a likely reciter, man orwoman, and they had sent him the name of Isabel Strange. 

On the occasion of the last lecture, Mr. Moggridge had not beensatisfied with the colour of the platform. It wanted repainting, and Ithink it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which Ihope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy ofhouse-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and greatsmooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thoughtnothing honest beneath him. 

It was the Friday of the entertainment, about one o'clock, and thoughMr. Moggridge had practically finished the work the day before, he hadslipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two. He hadbrought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand heplunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other hewould lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed alittle more paint. And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit ofslap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it and the pork-pie. 

Presently he became aware that he was not alone. Someone had enteredthe schoolroom at the far end. He turned round, with the paint-brush inone hand and the pork-pie in the other, and became abashed, for abeautiful lady had entered the room and was evidently about to make anenquiry. The surreptitiousness that seems to inhere in pork-piesprompted Mr. Moggridge to slip the pie into his trousers' pocket--forhis coat was off, and a white apron had taken its place. 

"Just doing a little bit of amateur painting, " he explained ratherawkwardly, advancing to the lady. 

"So I see, " said the lady, with a pleasant smile. "This, I believe, isZion Chapel--and I suppose this is the room where I am to recite. Myname is Isabel Strange, and I have come a little earlier, I daresay, than you expected; but I always like to see the room I'm to recitein--just to try my voice in and run over my pieces. "

"Certainly, of course, " said Mr. Moggridge; "but you have come all theway from London and so early. You will have some refreshment first, andif you'll honour Mrs. Moggridge and me--I may as well explain that I amthe chief deacon, " said Mr. Moggridge, dexterously slipping off hispainter's apron and getting into his coat. So, with a wistful glance athis work of art, Mr. Moggridge carried off the beautiful London lady toZion View. 

But was Isabel Strange beautiful? It was a new sort of beauty if shewas--or perhaps a very old sort. Yet beautiful was the first word thathad sprung into Mr. Moggridge's mind as she had surprised him in theschoolroom. Perhaps wonderful was the exacter word, wonderful in a waythat included beauty, --wonderful, and with a strange air about her thatsuggested exceptional refinement, exquisite sensitiveness torefined things. 

"Beautiful, O dear no!" said Mrs. Moggridge, to whom feminine beautydid not appeal, as the young lady freshened herself up after her travelin Mrs. Moggridge's best bedroom. "Why! she hasn't a regular feature inher face!"

Mrs. Moggridge herself had neat little pretty features set in fat. 

"Look at that long upper lip and her nose!"

Mrs. Moggridge omitted mention of eyes singularly powerful and very trueand sweet, as also of a long lithe mouth that reminded you of abeautiful serpent, a serpent which the true eyes plainly said would doyou no harm. 

Presently, however, Mrs. Moggridge had to admit that she was veryattractive. She knew she meant fascinating, but she wouldn't admit thatto Mr. Moggridge, who had dropped the subject; though a mind which againhad asserted its dim preference for new fashions was perhaps gropingafter expression of some such perplexity as this: why, if a face hasthe same effect upon you as beauty, may it not be described asbeautiful? If Mr. Moggridge really got so far even as cloudily to ponderthat, it is evident that he was not far from the kingdom of beauty. 

It is, of course, true enough that some faces are spoilt by flaws suchas every Mrs. Moggridge can point out, --faces that begin in one styleand end in another, half Greek perhaps and half Gothic; yet even suchfaces, if their individuality is strong enough, have their own rocococharm. For all but supremely great faces, of which perhaps the world hasnot seen half-a-dozen, absolute regularity, so-called correctness, offeatures is a calamity, and regular beauty on the ordinary human levelsis only another form of mediocrity. 

Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from eachother as rose after rose. How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom!It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come. How pretty youlook laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfullyyou are guarded against any form of variation! Perhaps no womenpotteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as alily and strong as marble. Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fairEnglish girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars?

Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was "very easy in hermanners. " This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, andMrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment. Sheliked a certain stiffness in strangers. It was not, however, in IsabelStrange's nature to oblige her in that particular. Her way of pouringher grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once thatshe had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly shechatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger ofher. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely withoutembarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies andwatched her. 

"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to aconspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece. 

"That's Mr. Londonderry, " said Mr. Moggridge. 

"O! _that's_ Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm, . .. I hadn'texpected him to be so young. "

"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position, " said Mr. Moggridge, started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man someday, will Mr. Londonderry. "

Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuineinterest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him. 

Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told ofits former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its presentprosperity. 

"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here, wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderrycame, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always somethinggoing on at New Zion, " he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr. Moggridge did so love anything that was alive. 

Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn, " and generally, as hewould have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. Atthe end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting thisyoung minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest ofsurprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner ofthe world, --perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadicwandering minstrel existence had brought her to. 

Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a veryyoung woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having tofight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herselftwenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though thenerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world forwrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, andher eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of herfeatures for a long time to come. A face so full of the mystery of lightcould only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magneticeyes would shine through the cold closed lids. 

Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather adreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one timeshe had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough forthat, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a littletoo fine for the stage. The positive and enduring joys of her life werethat she lived in London--for which she had the kind of passion thatsome people have for the Earth-Mother--and loved beauty as some womenlove religion. She had been loved many times, but never quite as sheneeded, as she demanded, to be loved. Vivid, passionate, and exquisite, she was what we call "modern" to the tips of her beautiful fingers; thatis, she united the newest opinions on all things with many ancientcharms. At the same time she was a good woman, though very wonderful andhighly dangerous. 

Presently Mr. Moggridge, who from where he sat commanded a view of thestreet, exclaimed, "Why, here is Mr. Londonderry himself!" rising as hespoke and passing into the hall, where he was met by a curiously richand mellow voice, which Isabel Strange thus heard for the first time;and then the glorified original of the photograph entered the room. 

As her eyes and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous"Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented toflatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed givenLondonderry an "interesting face, " as we have heard, but missed all therest--"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactlyhandsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of variouscommands and appeals, thought on the brow and laughter in the eyes, humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, withplenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin. Thesewere the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss;but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantasticaccompaniment of small talk. 

Let us not prolong the small-talk of the situation further, butintroduce Miss Strange as speedily as possible to Jenny also and to thelittle study in 3 Zion Place. 

Here her eager examination of the shelves was one succession of criesof sympathetic delight. "Why, you have got all the books I ever want toread again!" she exclaimed. "What wonderful people you are! How have youdone it--in Zion Place?"

"I suppose the books must have been blown here, " answered Theophil, gaily, "on the same fair wind that blew Miss Isabel Strange. "

"Yes, " said little Jenny, affectionately pressing her shoulder as thethree leaned forward looking at the shelves, "for if we seem wonderfulpeople to you, what must you seem to us--here, as you may well say, inZion Place?"

"What _does_ she remind you of?" said Jenny presently, with candidadmiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just _is_ the very woman. Wait--I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left fora moment or two alone, --a fact of no importance beyond this, that it wasthe first moment in their lives that they had ever been together alone. 

Jenny returned presently with a small copy of Botticelli's "Primavera, "which hung in her bedroom; and it was undoubtedly true that the figureof Flora might well have passed for a portrait of Isabel. The nose was alittle longer, that was all; but the rest of the face--particularly theeyes and mouth--was all but exact, and the general correspondencebetween the two faces in subtlety, strangeness, and, so to say, determined refinement, was complete. 

"It is strange that I should have loved that face so, " said Jenny. 

"It is very sweet of you, --Jenny, I had almost said, --but you are tookind to me, and a little selfish too--you give me no time to admire you. I wonder if Mr. Londonderry is modern enough to allow ladies to smoke inhis study. "

And thus it comes out that Jenny often smoked there!

The smoking-sister is now almost as common as a taste for Botticelli, and perhaps equally insincere; but in 1886 there still remained thatsense of contrast in both which we have declared the essence of romance. At present those curious people who resent the popular acceptance of anideal of beauty which they have done their best to popularise arebeginning to affect that a taste for Botticelli is a mark of the_bourgeoisie_. So does the whirligig of time bring in the paradoxer. 

A new kind of woman, while she is always the despairing hope of men, isseldom acceptable to women; yet when the evening came and Isabel stoodup to recite in New Zion schoolroom, women as well as men wereinstantaneously attracted. She stood very simply, with one hand lightlytouching the table at which Londonderry sat as chairman, and the otherat her side; and before she began her first recitation she glancedquietly over the audience, as though her eyes were thus preparing theproper magnetic atmosphere for her voice. 

She began with some simple Longfellow poem, that New Zion might feel athome; then she recited a fairy poem called "The Forsaken Merman, " which, of course, was only a fairy tale, and yet somehow was so full of humanpathos that it was more real than if it had been really "real, " thatis, prosaic. 

For impressing the imagination of her audience she relied mainly on herown imagination and her voice; striking no attitudes, and allowingherself nothing of that facial distortion which is the resort of theunimaginative, and destroys not creates illusion. Of course, her facechanged, but the change was one of which she was probably unconscious, and which she couldn't have reproduced to her mirror; it was not a playof features, but a play of lights and shadows and nerves, a flow or anebb of radiance in the eyes, a subtle sensitiveness of the lips andnerves; and her effect was mainly produced by her voice, over which shewielded indescribable powers of modulation. It was a voice sosympathetic, so intimate, that it almost seemed too intimate, tooappealingly sympathetic. It was so a woman might recite to a man sheloved, but you almost felt as though the voice were too personal arevelation for an audience, --felt an impulse, so to say, to throw a veilover it, though you were glad from your soul that no one threw it. Andthe voice was a wonderful actor too. It could act the scenery as well. You saw it all, you heard it all, you felt it all, in the voice:--thegreat winds blowing shorewards, the wild white horses in the spray, "The white-walled town, And the little gray church on the windy shore;"

and when she said, "Down, down, down!" you were indeed in the verydepths of the sea--and were all sitting, Mr. Moggridge with the rest, amid coral caves and seaweed, and in a curious green andshimmering light. 

But what a world of heart-break there was in her "Come, dear children, come away!" You felt you simply couldn't bear her to say it again. Nexttime you'd have to cry, and cry you did, and you weren't ashamed, forsuddenly when you came out of the trance of the voice you found thatevery one else was crying too, and Mr. Londonderry had quite forgottenthat he was a chairman, and had to be nudged to announce the next piece. 

This was a very strange poem, and made you feel like a stained-glasswindow; it was full of incense, but it was full of something elsetoo. It began

 "The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of heaven" . .. 

and there was something in the voice that suggested such a height upabove the world that you drew your breath lest she should fall over. Andthere was a lover crying in the poem, you could hear him crying faraway down on the earth, and there were some lines which went:

 "We two will lie i' the shadow of That mystic living tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be" . .. 

that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; andthen there was a curious verse with nothing but women's names in it, yetsomehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out ofthe voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow andrather frightened. Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil--it was sothey should bathe together in God's sight--and Theophil sent back aswonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on. Otherwise, of course, itwould have been as wonderful as Jenny's. 

Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can bestjudge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys atthe back, who during the last lecture on "Henrik Ibsen" had discovereda most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quiteforgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school. 

Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light withthe excitement and wonder of it all. 

"How wonderful you are! Doesn't it seem strange to be so wonderful?"said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things inJenny's room. 

"Dear child!" said Isabel, kissing Jenny on her brow, "it is you thatare wonderful. "

There is no joy in the world better worth seeing, better worth living, than the joy of young people with the same dreams, the same thoughts, and--so important--the same words for them, blown together by someunexpected conjunction of the four winds, met by some blissfuldispensation of the planets of youth. 

There have been periods in history especially favourable for the ecstasyof such meetings, early mornings of the human spirit, when lovely newtruth and lovely new beauty were dawning wild and dewy in the strangeeast, and while the deep breathing of the older generations still asleepmade a more wonderful loneliness of dawn, for the hushed and happy bandsof young people holding each other's hands and watching in themagic twilight. 

To have been young in Italy in the time of Dante, in England in the timeof Shakespeare, and to have met in such a mighty morning--with dangertoo to keep us grateful. Ah, we have missed those dawns; and yet I doubtif the whole recovered beauty of Greece and Rome, or the thrilling newfashions in romance and poetry wafted across the seas from Italy to helpmake Shakespeare, ever gave young people a keener thrill of newness andmystery than the books and pictures so eagerly discussed by the littlegroup that gathered over supper that night in 3 Zion Place. 

To have read "The House of Life!"--to have seen the "VenusVerticordia"! Ah! that was life! And Isabel had actually been to Mr. G. F. Watts's studio--walked about there a whole afternoon. The young NewZioners looked at her. 

"O Theophil, we _must_ go to London, " cried Jenny. She meant when theywere married. 

Theophil pressed her hand tenderly, as she impulsively sought his forsympathy, and his eyes left Isabel's face a moment to smile a true "yes"into Jenny's. 

Of course no one had eyes for anyone but Isabel that night. Was she not, as the announcements had said, "of London, " an ambassadress of beautyfrom the capital of the great queen? There was really little she couldtell these clever young people, who amazed and attracted her by theirreality, --the unrealities of "intensity" and "modernity" and the resthad, of course, already begun in London, --but she represented to themthe sparkle of the new beauty and truth they loved. She knew littleintimate anecdotes of the poets and painters they loved, piquant gossipand brilliant _mots_; and then she was one of those women who are likeincense in a room, enriching by her very presence, exhaling mystery anddistinction, like a pomander of strange spices. 

You might love her for a long time or a little, but love her you wereobliged to while you were with her, whoever else you loved too. Therewas no other word for it. Even little James Whalley had conscience-pangsas he looked at Isabel, for he had been engaged for five years; but thepoet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was alreadyburnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. Theinflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state ofignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature hasmade them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not goon maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of theconditions of their precarious art that they must daily exposethemselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of theemotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear theirdeath-song amid the flames. 

Theophil?

Well, we can talk of Theophil again. Meanwhile Jenny was as much in lovewith her herself, and he held Jenny's hand and loved her, O yes, sodearly--and was quite safe. Fear not, little Jenny; it was only death, you remember, that was to separate Jenny and Theophil. 

Mrs. Talbot--if she won't bore you--had made an interesting remark. Shehad not escaped Isabel's charm, but there was "something, " something alittle alarming about her, --a little like that wicked wall-paper. 

Jenny divulged this criticism over supper when her mother was out ofear-shot. 

"How very clever of her!" exclaimed Isabel. 

"She said the same of Dvorak's music, " said Jenny. 

"Good again, " said Isabel. "How clever of her! Don't you feel how rightshe is? We are all like that wall-paper, and everything we care about islike it. The New Spirit--that is, the devil--is in that wall-paper. Apsychometrist could detect Wagner and Keats, and Schopenhauer, andRossetti and Swinburne, and all the rest of them in that wall-paper, just as surely as he could have detected Tupper and Eliza Cook in thewall-papers of 1851. Am I not right?"

"If we could only paper New Zion like this!" exclaimed Theophil, acurious new feeling of joy and pain shooting through him to hear a womanthus expressing herself as an independent brain. 

"Yes! New Zion! I'd quite forgotten all about New Zion. It seemsimpossible to think of you together. "

"And a little absurd, I suppose, " said Theophil. 

"It is uncouth material, I admit, " he continued, "and yet somehow itamuses us to mould it all the more; and then you mustn't forget that wehad been given no other--but I don't suppose you can understand?"(Theophil often used "we" in this imperatorial sense, meaning himself, as of course he had every right to mean. )

"O yes, but I can, " Isabel hastened to correct. "I understand power. "

"Beauty always does, " was the young minister's reply. 

"Besides, " he presently resumed, "we are glad to have beenNonconformists--once. A Puritan training is a good thing--to look backupon. You are all the more thorough in your pleasures, the truerhumanist, for something of it still lurking in your blood. "

"Yes, of course you're right. I don't like the word 'pagan'; but forwant of a better, we might say that the best pagans have come of Puritanstock. Besides, it is half the romance of life to have something toescape from, isn't it?"

"And someone to escape with the other half, " responded Theophil, nimbleas a real town wit. 

O it was a wonderful night. Let us build five tabernacles!

"Good-night, dear Jenny. "

"Good-night, dear wonderful Isabel. "

So at last the two girls bade each other good-night at the door ofJenny's bedroom, where Isabel was to sleep. 

Masterful youth! So wild to take, so eager to surrender, the Christianname. Strange, what passion sometimes can be put into a_Christian_ name!

When the door was shut on Isabel, she made no haste to undress. Indeed, she sat down on the side of the bed as though she had been waiting tosit down for ever so long, sat very still as in a dream, and an hourwent by and she was still sitting and gazing in front of her. 

And downstairs in the study, where the lamps were still burning, Theophil was sitting by the fire in just the same curiously wrought andwithdrawn way, with just the same eyes. 

Isabel's room was over his. Presently she heard him moving about; thenshe heard him coming upstairs. For a moment the air seemed to grow warm, as she heard him softly pass her room; then she heard him closehis door. 

She shook her reverie from her, as though it had been a black veil fullof stars, and began to undress. Presently her eyes fell on a little pileof handkerchiefs, with needle and cotton, and little letters printed ondainty tapes, beside it. Jenny had forgotten to put away her sewing. 

Isabel took up one of the handkerchiefs, to which the needle and threadwere still attached, and read "Jenny Lond . .. " (Don't you know that'sbad luck, Jenny?)

"So soon as that! Is it so soon as that?" she sighed. 

Happy Jenny!

CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE

Isabel was leaving very early next morning for London, so good-byes mustbe brief. Jenny and Theophil saw her off at the station, but beforeleaving Zion Place there had been a moment in which for the second timein their lives she and Theophil had been alone. 

They had stood together in the little study and taken each other'shands, without a word, and they had looked into each other's faces asthose look whom a look must last a long time. 

They didn't even say good-bye, for, if they were never to meet again, the look was not good-bye. And meet again it was not unlikely theywould, for it had been already arranged that Isabel was to lead off theautumn entertainments; but the look did not mean that, either. As lifehad been planned for them, all subsequent meetings must be merelytrivialities. They had met once, and fate had decided that they mustnever meet like that again. In that long look each knew that they metand parted for ever, autumn arrangements notwithstanding. 

Each came out of that look as out of a great cathedral, and from thatmoment till the train left Theophil, with an unwonted sense ofloneliness, by Jenny's side, they entered that cathedral no more. Theirdevotions were done for that day, and they must resume their secularduties, rippling idly over the great deeps of themselves. 

One always leaves a station from which a dear friend has just gone witha certain subdued air, a certain bereaved hush in the voice, and evenJenny felt a momentary loneliness too. But it was not long before thedoors of home opened again for her in the sound of Theophil's voice;and in the sense of the old familiar nearness to him she was back againsafe in the only world she ever wished to dwell in. 

It was more of an effort with Theophil, and the voice that made home forJenny had a strange sound in his own ears, as though it were stilltalking to Isabel; but the effort was soon made, and though Jenny teasedhim a little and said she believed he had quite lost his, that was tosay _her_, heart to Isabel, of course she believed no such thing. Doubtis too terrible a toy for true love to play with. You only dare to doubtas you must sometimes face the fear of death. 

"I wish next October were here, " said Jenny, artlessly; "it seems such along time to wait to see her again. "

Did Theophil wish the same? He hardly knew. 

"Distance is such a silly thing, " went on Jenny. "It seems to have beeninvented just to separate those who want to be together. It seems soarbitrary, so unnecessary. "

"I suppose death is a form of distance, " said Theophil, irrelevantly. 

"Life too, I'm afraid, " said Jenny. 

"Yes, indeed, life too, " assented Theophil, dreamily. 

"If I were to die, " said Jenny, suddenly, "would you still do what wesaid?"

"Why do you ask that, dear? You're a very serious little woman thismorning. Of course I would. You know. But why do you ask me now?"

"Oh, only, dear, because I wonder whether we really ought to. SomehowIsabel's visit has made me feel that life is a bigger, fuller thing thanI had dreamed, and that men like you, at all events, have duties towardsit even greater than your love for a little thing like me. "

"Jenny dear, don't talk like that. Why should you? You don't surelydoubt my love!"

"Of course not, Theophil. It was only my silly little brain thinkingfor once in a while, --and I don't mean to be unkind, but really I rathermean it. Are you still quite sure there is nothing in the world moreimportant than love?"

"Quite sure, " he answered; "surer than ever--if that were possible. Youare not beginning to doubt that? Certainly it is a silly little brain, if that's what its thinking is coming to. "

"I don't mean it for myself. Little women have nothing but love to thinkof; but great men, men with a mission in the world . .. "

"Please, Jenny!"

"Well, dear, I mean it; and I sometimes think that perhaps, perhaps, I'mhindering your life; that if you were to be bothered with love at all, you should have married some clever, wonderful woman, --woman, say, like Isabel. "

"Jenny!"

"Of course, dear, I know you don't think so, " she continued; and herealised that it was all artless accident on her part--"Still I cannothelp thinking it for you sometimes, dear, and sometimes I feel veryselfish to have your love, --as though, so to say, I was wearing someoneelse's crown. "

"Jenny dear, will you promise never to talk like that again? A cleverwoman! To be a woman is to be a genius, but to be a clever woman is tobe another man of talent. "

"That wouldn't be fair to Isabel. "

"No, " assented Theophil, "Isabel is different too. "

And that brought them to Theophil's office and good-bye till theevening. 

For the evening there had been fixed an important church meeting, thefirst annual business meeting of minister and deacons since Londonderryhad come to New Zion. It was an occasion of jubilation all round, particularly for Mr. Moggridge, who gave voice to New Zion's generalsatisfaction, you may be sure, in no uncertain terms of praise. 

New Zion was, indeed, _New_ Zion once more, he said, thanks to theirindefatigable young pastor, --a play on words which was received with theapplause due to so unmistakable a union of wit and truth. 

Nor did the proceedings result in mere compliments. The church founditself rich enough to increase its minister's stipend; and when Theophiltook Mr. Moggridge back to supper, another surprise awaited him, in theform of a suspicious-looking letter, which, being opened, revealed aquite unexceptionable £50 note, enclosed in a sheet of note-paper, onwhich was written--"From never mind who. "

The writing was unknown to Londonderry, but there could be only oneculprit. 

"Of course, Mr. Moggridge, this is from you. Really . .. "

"No, sir, indeed; you make a mistake there, " protested Moggridge, lyingbadly, and growing purple. 

"Who do _you_ suspect, Jenny?"

"Why, of course, it's Mr. Moggridge!"

"Mr. Moggridge!" exclaimed Jenny impulsively, throwing her arms roundMr. Moggridge's surprised shoulders, and kissing him somewhere in hiswhiskers, --"Mr. Moggridge! you are the dearest, kindest man in theworld!"

And Jenny was not far wrong. 

"Mr. Londonderry, " said Mr. Moggridge, by way of changing the subject, and warmly grasping the young man's hand, "New Zion's proud of you, sir--and so is Eli Moggridge. "

And that moment would have been as good for all three, even without thefifty-pound note. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE

I realize that any attempt henceforth to enchain the reader's interestwith church meetings, or the like enthralments, will be more thanhopeless. That is the worst of allowing love to creep into one's story. He insists on having the stage to himself, and in that determination theaudience is entirely with him. Previously you may have been interestedin all kinds of peaceable, unexciting things, far more good for you, butenter love, and all the rest is suddenly fallen tame beyond endurance. 

It is of no use to urge that life's bill of the play includes manyhardly less brilliant and attractive performers. They are all wellenough in their way, till the eternal Paganini is there with his oldfiddle once more at his shoulder; then there is an end of allseriousness, or a beginning, as you please. 

Well, I'll do my best to get over the six months between March andOctober as quickly as possible; and, indeed, it will not be verydifficult, after all, for very little happened, to speak of, during thattime to any of the chief actors engaged in making this history. 

Perhaps it was this consideration that prompted old Mr. Talbot--O, bother old Mr. Talbot!--that prompted old Mr. Talbot, I say, to take theimportant step of dying, when, poor old man! his death would give theleast possible trouble. 

There seemed as little reason for his dying as there had seemed for hisliving, for as far as anyone knew there was nothing the matter with him, except an extreme sleepiness of an evening, which was but natural in anold weary man who still kept at his stone-masonry though he wasfull seventy. 

Night after night, for some weeks, he had been getting sleepier andsleepier. 

"Why, dad, I never saw such an old sleepy-head"--his wife had ralliedhim good-naturedly one night, looking at him with a sudden oddexpression in her face. 

"Eh, lass, but I was noddin' and no mistake, " said the old man, struggling drowsily with the heaviness, and presently succumbingonce more. 

"He's off again, " said Mrs. Talbot to herself, as she lifted the lid ofa pent saucepan in which some boiled onions were mightily bubbling in awild little world of steam. 

Presently the old man sighed deeply, --so you would have thought; butMrs. Talbot, hurrying to him, knew that he had tried to say "Jane, " andhad said it for the last time. 

Yes, he had been getting sleepier and sleepier; all his life he had beentrying to sleep, and at last he slept. 

To most people Mr. Talbot's death was the first intimation of his everhaving lived, and one rather resents for the old man the one day'spublicity which death enforced upon him. It was indeed well for him thathe was dead, for such unwonted excitement would surely have killed him. This important coming and going of undertakers; this populous invasionof friends talking like muffled drums in the front parlour, and passingup and down and up and down the stairs, in and out and in and out of hisstill room; this throng of neighbours awaiting him in the streets; theseplumed impatient horses, and these carriages of dark grandeur--"Jane, why ever didn't you bury me by the back door?" would surely have beenthe old man's pitiful complaint could he have known. 

However, the day passed and the old man was safe at last, where nofront-parlour visitors should affright him more, and where no one wouldtrouble his old brains for speech any more; and to all, save one, hisdeath was but as though he had moved a little farther into the kitchen. 

It seemed almost strange that even his wife should miss him. One hadthought so little of them as man and wife. One could hardly, even byprocess of thinking, realise that between these rinded and wrinkledbeings love had once hung like a rosy cloud, from which one day hadsprung Jenny. 

On one or two occasions, indeed, they had been surprised in an uncannysemblance of a caress, and once in a while an almost supernaturalretrospect had lit up and vanished again in an unaccustomed tender word;and to have been present then was to feel somehow frightened. 

Ah! the gay young leaves no longer kiss across in the morning sun, butthe stern old trees have meetings you know not of far beneath theground. Their roots are twisted and twined in a wonderful embrace there;there in the dark they are very close together, and shall not bewrenched apart without groanings that cannot be uttered. 

Jenny can hardly be said to have missed her father, except through hermother, who seemed suddenly to grow a little deafer, a little moredim-sighted, just a trifle less brisk and busy than before, and with atouch about her of that old-age awesomeness that mutters to itself incorners and seems to know strange things. 

Yes, Jane missed her John. Her old heart knew that he was no longersitting in the kitchen. 

CHAPTER XV

JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER

Jenny and her old mother began to grow closer to each other at thistime. Perhaps it was because the old woman felt lonelier, and perhaps, too, because the loss of her old man had sent her thoughts wanderingamong the enchanted fields of her young days, that she began to talksometimes to Jenny about her marriage, and to give her quaint advice onthe subject of "managing" husbands; "as if, " Jenny smilingly said toherself, "an old man like father was the same, belonged even to the samerace, as Theophil. "

Perhaps Mrs. Talbot scented some such reflection in Jenny's expression;at all events, she answered it with an "Eh, but all men are alike, mydear, under their skins, --all alike, and they need humouring andmanaging just in the same way, prince or peasant. "

The idea of "managing" Theophil had something repulsive in it for Jenny;there was an element of deceit, of cunning, implied which didn't go withher ideas of true love and the life beautiful of which she was dreaming. She didn't believe that men and women who loved were really differentfrom each other, and perhaps she was right. 

About this time, too, Mrs. Talbot began to produce from mysterioustreasure-caves, entered apparently from an old press in her bedroom, allkinds of wonderful things which would be useful to Jenny some day in herhouse: terrible little ornaments, --very sacred, though, --sadquaintnesses of the spirit of beauty pathetically fumbling about incountry brains; wool mats worked in the primary colours; and such woolwonders as a wool basket of flowers, in which real wool flowers grew outof a wool basket which you held by an over-arching wool handle, thewhole worked with undeniable but how forlorn ingenuity, --a prehistoricrelic of Mrs. Talbot's legendary school-days: survivals from a periodwhich is best summed up in the one wonderful word "antimacassar, " aperiod when for some unrecorded reason men and women had to protecttheir furniture against their oleaginous selves, and beautiful lockswere guarded from lover's fingers by coats of triple oil. 

But these were things worth having, too, --bits of old lace and primembroidery, that bore the stamp of a refinement that is neverold-fashioned; and when Mrs. Talbot descended from the beautiful shecould show you real treasures. 

I don't think there was any word in the language, not even Bible words, which Mrs. Talbot pronounced with such an accent of solemnity as theword "linen. " The words "China" and "cut glass, " and perhaps "silver, "ran it close, but "linen" was undoubtedly the word in which all Mrs. Talbot's sense of the seriousness of living, her sense of householddistinction, her deep sense of the importance of prosperity, and herstern love of cleanliness found most impressive utterance. 

Mrs. Talbot could never have smiled as she said "linen. "

And the linen she had been storing for Jenny might indeed have been thevery stuff of which lilies are made, lilies smelling of lavender. 

Such pairs of sheets! A queen might even fear to await her lord lyingamid such linen; for white indeed must be the body that dares rivalrywith Mrs. Talbot's sheets, --sheets which might indeed be said to settlethat old question of the snows of yester-year. 

_Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_?

Surely they have been settling, flake on flake, year after year, in Mrs. Talbot's linen-press, till at last there is quite a snowdrift of fairwhite linen for Jenny and Theophil to lie in. 

Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, afterChristmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th--the secondanniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion--will fly by in no time. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny--with occasional contributions fromTheophil--began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer. 

Translated into the language of those more magnificent circles in whichthis simple-hearted romance has no desire to move, a "bottom drawer"might be described as a trousseau, though such translation would be onlypartially correct. A bottom drawer is a good deal more than a trousseau. It is the corner of a girl's wardrobe, usually its bottom drawer, wherethe home that is to be begins to take shape in deposits of variouskissed objects, minor articles of apparel, of ornament oruse, --handkerchiefs such as we have already seen Jenny marking, indefiance of the old prophecy that the bride who dares even to write hermarried name before her marriage will never know a wedding day; quaintcandlesticks that had to be picked up in some old curiosity shop as comeupon or be missed altogether; pretty shoes of a pattern you weren'tlikely to meet with again; occasionally, perhaps, even an anticipatorywedding present, that some friend who would be far away in Australiawhen the day came had already contributed; a pretty tea-service Theophilhad suddenly taken a fancy to buy for Jenny one day, --"any straw willhelp a nest;" a sweet and rather naughty picture that must never be hunganywhere but in their little sacred bedroom, --"O love, our little room!"

How often did Jenny bend lovingly over that drawer, which by now hadspread itself over a whole chest of drawers, --for home was growing, growing, --only a few more months and it would have grown so big and realthat nothing but a little house would hold it. And Theophil was broughtsometimes to peep in too, --"O love, think of it--our little home. "

CHAPTER XVI

THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME

Have I seemed to shirk the subject of Theophil's feelings all this time?

Well, I confess I have rather shrunk from writing down in so many wordsthat he was in love with Isabel, --obvious as the fact has been, --just ashe himself shrank from admitting the same truth even to his own soul. 

When he had sat up in his study that night of the recital, he had lookedthe whole sad splendid truth in its wonderful face, had loved it wildlyfor an hour, and then shut his eyes to it for ever. 

He knew that Isabel was the woman God had made for him, sweet, dearJenny the woman he had made for himself, and he bowed before the work ofthe greater artist. 

Never voice nor look nor touch of woman had affected Theophil before asthe least tone or glance or movement of Isabel stirred him to the centreof his being. To meet her eyes was to release a music that wentshuddering through the whole world; her lightest word was filled withechoes of infinite things. Not a lover only, but anyone with instinctsfor such perceptions, looking at Isabel, would have said: There is awoman who is needed to make some man a great poet, a great artist, somekind of great man! She belongs to the history-making women. Hundreds ofwomen will attract men by the hundred where she will attractcomparatively few, but that few will be the pick of men; and some day, when the other women have gone the way of all sweet roses, she willstill remain (if she has found an artist to understand her face) thefrontispiece of some distinguished biography, or hang in a gallery ofthe period among the few faces that were indestructibly personal; notthe faces that have lived, but the faces that still go on living, thefaces that are influences still, the unique, daemonic faces. 

Isabel was indeed a muse that waited for her poet. The mere idea of sucha woman, cherished across dividing seas and separating years, will helpa man be great. To grow great near or far is the one way to be hers, andto pile up great work for her sake is perhaps the best way to love her. She could never be his wife, but she might still be his muse, resolvedTheophil, feigning in that reflection for the moment a more humancomfort than, alas! there really was. 

But was there to be no loss to Jenny in this?

 "True love in this differs from gold or clay, That to divide is not to take away. "

It is the convenient old plea of the poets, and yet it is sometimestrue. It was true here. There is, I know, a sort of primitive man orwoman--I believe they will some day be exhibited in menageries--whocannot be on with a new love without being ungratefully off with theold. All depends of what the two loves are made. If it is bodily fireand no more, of course the new love will put out the old as the greatsun puts out a little smouldering fire; and the majority of so-calledlove-stories are merely disastrous conflagrations of that sort. In suchcases the new love is no sooner found than the old becomes grievous, aburden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritablyrepellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted. Which is the illusion, one wonders, --the original enchantment or thefinal disenchantment?

When, however, love can give a better account of its preferences thanthis, and point out, say in Jenny, many good reasons why she was atfirst and must for ever remain love-worthy, whatever rival reasons forlove another woman may bring; when too there is added to those reasonsfor loving Jenny the dear habit of loving her, the gratitude--love mustforgive the word--which has accumulated interest upon the original love, the beauties that have been gained by becoming familiarities, and thefamiliarities that have become beauties by very use, --well, really, isit such a hardship, after all, for a man to be expected to keep true tohis Jenny?

Oh! but passion doesn't reason like this. Indeed, O passionate reader!Is passion, then, merely a wild beast, a savage, a blind fire? Must itforfeit its fine name if it remembers mercy or owns duty? Is it any lesspassion because it refuses sometimes to glut itself, and dares to gohungry all its days instead; any less passion because it chooses to burnup its own heart in an agony of its own consuming fire?

Mere violence is not a strength but a weakness in passion, and sometimesthere is more passion in patience than in anything else in the world. Apassion that knows not pity is merely a daemonic possession, and shouldbe taken to the madhouse. 

I confess that there is nothing in the world more amazing to me than theeasy brutality with which one hears of some men doing what is called"breaking off their engagements. " Only a new face has to show itself, and the old face at once disappears with a blow and a wail. 

Murder, of course, is one way out of many difficult situations, and theworst kinds of murder are by no means capital offences. It is true thatall engagements are not made by the same vital bonds as that of Jenny'sand Theophil's, but many are. For a man wilfully to break an engagementmeans sometimes that the whole love-life in a woman is atrophied, allthat made her woman stabbed to the quick of life. 

Yet no one who knows anything of women can have failed to remark thatwomen themselves are even more brutal in this matter. Nothing couldexceed the executioner-like promptitude with which a woman will despatcha man for whom she has ceased to care. But in her case there is to beurged that, though fundamentally love is of equal importance to man andwoman, it does not so often mean the absolute saving or wrecking of aman's life as it does a woman's. It is not a disgrace to a man to bejilted; it is to a woman. For a woman to be jilted is for her to havefailed, --as a woman; and for a woman to have failed as a woman is forher to value no other success. 

All this to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is nomilksop because he is not going to jilt--that is, murder--poor littleJenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds. Butthe agony of it none the less! O Jenny! Jenny! sweet and true and goodand dear as ever, --if only you would just take a sudden fancy forsomeone else!

Meanwhile the months were going by, and the day drawing nearer when, fora brief moment of fire, the orbits of those two separated lives were totouch once more. 

What of Isabel during these months? The woman whom God had created forTheophilus Londonderry did not forget her promise to write to the womanwhom Theophilus Londonderry had created in his own image. Wonderfulletters, of course! Why don't women publish volumes of their letters, asmen collect their scattered essays? There is no writing in the worldmore immediately, conqueringly personal than a really clever woman'sletters; and they are not always compromising. 

Isabel's letters were the perfection of self-expression. Her handwritingswept across the page just as she would walk down a street, at onceeager and yet stately and subtle-rhythmed; the shape of some of thewords reminded you of her hats, --hats everyone thought she paid guineasfor, but which she made for herself at a cost perhaps of five shillings:hats which were Paris with a touch of fairyland, somewhere anunobtrusive feather of the fantastic, somewhere a personal magic in theinimitable twist or lie of a bow--; her face looked out at you from a_g_ or an _x_, a gesture flashed back to you in a sudden distinguishedstroke of the pen, and her voice was somewhere, everywhere, among thewords, like a violin. 

Without any apparent literary device she contrived to make you, whileyou read her letters, do what she was doing, see what she was seeing, and form, as though acted on by some magic property in the words, pictures of all she told you. 

One piece of news you would not expect her to have told. I have saidthat women are both executioners of the tiresome. In this Isabel, Ifear, was no exception to her sex. Like most independent girls inLondon, she had a little theatre-guard of devoted men friends, who tookit in turn to companion her to plays or picture-galleries; and these, with admirable tact, she contrived to keep in, to them, theunsatisfactory relation of brothers. One of these, however, had of latebeen growing dangerously unfraternal. His presents had been growingexpensive. Cigarettes and chocolates, and pretty editions, like gloves, and boxes of flowers, are every pretty woman's lawful spoils; butcostlier gifts are to be looked on with suspicion. Besides, the doomedman's letters had been growing warmer. Indeed, Isabel remembered withsomething like a shudder, so soon as she was back in her little room, with its curious pictures and its general sense of exotic refinement, that she had allowed him to kiss her the last time they had beentogether. The reminiscence decided her. Theophil could never be hers;but at least no facile or mediocre attachments should fill his place. Soat once there is posted a letter, as kind as cruelty can make it, andwith it go a little ormolu clock, a pair of mother-of-pearlopera-glasses, a lovely fan it was hard, Isabel, to part with, --andthere is an end of that. 

"Not after Theophil!" she sighed, as she took up her great Persian cat, and, like it, sat gazing into the fire that flickered dreamily among herfantastic possessions, --a mystery gazing idly into a mystery. 

CHAPTER XVII

"O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE . .. "

Well, the months have at last gone by, --dark solid bodies of absence, not a day mercifully lost count of by the old calendar-maker, not anhour of the long sentence remitted for a brave patience in the waiting. They are reckoning by weeks at last, and now, excitedly, by days, breathlessly now by little fast-dispersing hours. 

The blackness that filled the world was a month ago streaked with gray;three weeks ago there was a line of faint colour in the east; afortnight, and there are scarlet plumes in the far heaven, and a fainttwitter of song; a week, and the whole sky is a commotion of gloryand birds. 

To meet again! O to meet again, just to look at each other again! We arephilosophers, we are brave, we shall remember Jenny, but O! the raptureof just beholding each other again. 

"Thank God, you are alive! you are real! O Theophil, there is the littlescar on your forehead I've been longing to see. "

"Yes! it is Isabel! She walks just as she did a thousand years ago. I amcarrying her rugs. How well I remember her umbrella!"

"How fantastic absence is!" said Isabel, as the three friends sat oncemore that evening in the little study where nothing seemed to havechanged, and where they seemed to have been sitting all the hours ofthose now quite disrespectfully forgotten months. 

"Yes, but how real!" said Jenny. It was Jenny who said "how real!"

How fantastic, too, is the present! Sometimes, perhaps nearly always, ittortures us with the unreality, the unrealisability of precious momentsthat are flying, flying, and can never come again; and at other timesit equally eludes us with a sense of their indestructibility. To-nightthe present had chosen to seem real. Theophil felt, as he looked atIsabel, that this wonderful nearness could never pass away. Her dress, her coiled _cendré_ hair, her soft smile, her very attitudes, seemed towear a curious expression of everlastingness. Yes, she would sit justlike that, and he and Jenny would sit near her for ever and ever. Nomere abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness theplace where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity hadbreathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenlytouched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell ofan astral light, where every moment of time endures in strange paintingsupon space. Isabel and Theophil and Jenny were sitting together in theastral light. 

And yet the hours had already been flying, for, the recital was alreadyover, --New Zion more in love with Isabel than ever. The same littlesupper as six months ago had been merry and come to an end, the guestshad gone, the house was quiet, and this hour that seemed so real was thefrail last of that day of dreams. 

Yes! but an arrangement had been made which perhaps accounts for thesecurity of that hour. Isabel's agents had planned for her a littlecircular tour in northern towns comparatively adjacent to Coalchester, and when a fortnight of such recitals was ended, she was to return andgive still another recital at New Zion. Then there must be parting, realblack parting again. Meanwhile, the fortnight that lay between the twodays of meeting gained a curious sense of being really spent together. As two walking together on a long road may separate, and one walk tillalmost out of sight of the other and then slowly return, but the twoendure no sense of parting, feeling together all the time, so Isabeland Theophil felt about this fortnight. 

But did they speak no word, look no look all these hours, of all theirhearts cried out to say? Was Jenny there all the time? Nearly. Stillthere was a moment granted them, which, added to the two momentspreviously recorded, made a total perhaps of four minutes, which life sofar generously allowed them to be alone together in. Yet such is love'smiraculous velocity that it had said all it needed to say, given all, inthose four minutes. All it had to say to-night was just two Christiannames, said so solemnly, so tenderly, so honestly. Just "Isabel, " just"Theophil, " and a long quiet clasp of hand and eyes. It was enough. Itis written. 

CHAPTER XVIII

ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS

It was not enough!

If you would safely renounce a joy, you had best enjoy something of itfirst. Renunciation must have something to live on. You can "take up thewhole of love and utter it, " and _then_ "say adieu for ever, " butnot before. 

I have asked mercy for Jenny, though it was perhaps hardly necessary, for the world always pities Jenny. Now I would ask it for Isabel andTheophil, who are thus quietly to sacrifice the greatest thing in theirlives, the one reality for which they have come into existence, forJenny's sake. Great is their love for each other, but even greater andstranger must be their involuntary love for an invisible goodness, anideal of ineffable pity. They are going to die that Jenny may live. 

Strange, this gentle heroism of human creatures one for the other. Wouldit be unfair to ask that each should support the anguish of his owndestiny, and that when Jenny's turn has come she should take herlightning? Hers, had she known it, was the cup of anguish here; forTheophil and Isabel had been decreed the cup of joy. But will they drinkit? No, they will change the cups; perhaps the bitter cup will growsweet near the dregs, being drunk together. 

Yet this love of theirs, this perilous chance for Jenny, was none oftheir making. Their joy had been given to them by unseen hands. It isfairly theirs. Next time, perhaps, it will be their turn to suffer. Itis Jenny's now. .. 

But no! the good heart of humanity will defeat the cruel ruling of thegods. Let the lightning come upon them--not little Jenny. 

Yet for this, Jenny, you will not grudge them their piteous reward. Yours are all the years, Jenny. You will spare them one day out of allthe years. Think, Jenny, of the hours and hours and hours you andTheophil have spent in careless happiness, and they--one almost laughsto think of it--have just so far been granted four minutes. For fourminutes out of infinite time life has privileged them to bealone together. 

It will be far safer too. Otherwise you know not with what fearful flamelove will fill the chasms under ground, circling and seething in thefiery darkness. Theophil loves you, but some day your home will suddenlybe rent from cope to base, unless his poor heart may speak, yea, babbleitself, just once in Isabel's ears. 

A temptation had come to Theophil. At first he put it aside. Thenpassion, wiser for once than reason, told him that it was a necessity, and he knew that passion was right. A week of the fortnight had gone, and Theophil remembered that Isabel would now be in the neighbourhood ofcertain famous woods where in his boyhood he had often wandered, and heremembered that she was to have the Monday quite free. That Monday theyshould spend together in those enchanted woods. His secular businessoften took him to towns thirty or forty miles away, and it was notstartling for him not to return till late at night. Thus Isabel and heshould steal their one day out of all the years. 

So there went a note without one word of love in it to tell Isabel thatlove was coming by the morning train; and so on that morning Isabelstood waiting for love at that little wayside station, and presently, with a mighty rushing sound of iron and brass, love came and stood veryquietly by her side, and looked into her eyes. 

They took each other's hands quietly, and left the station without aword; nor did they speak for a long while, walking blissfully side byside through a village street which was to take them to the green andlonely woods. Soon the houses were passed, and they still walked onsilent, listening to the song of their nearness. 

Now, as they drank each other's presence through every feasting nerve, they knew how starved they had been. As the lane narrowed and gloomedgreen, dipping through caverns of bright leaves, they drew closer, andsmiled gently on each other; but they were not going to speak for a longwhile yet. Had they not come away into this loneliness that they mightbe silent together, that they might sit, hour after hour, and just watcheach other, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation, a trance ofrecognition, a fascination that was almost fearful, that was so kind andyet so cruel in its very power?

The woods are very still, but there is nothing in the world so still asthese two lovers, as they lie down on the green earth and gaze on eachother, hour after hour. When they find a word as great as theirsilence, they will speak it--but they will find none except it be"Isabel, " except it be "Theophil. "

And great passion has as little use for caresses as for words, andkisses, which gay sensual love gathers greedily like little goldenflowers, and pays for nimbly with little, pretty words, will be almostas rare as words. 

Kisses! it is not to eat bonbons that these two have come out into thewoods. 

Kisses! what kiss of the blind lips could match the kiss of those rapttragic eyes!

Kisses are but the diminutives of the great word "love;" they are butthe small change of passion, meteorites, star-dust of the great andterrible planet. 

Their souls are swung high above time and space in one never-endingkiss, --the kiss of that predestined irrefragable union, of whichmeetings and partings and kisses and caresses and words, and every otherfragmentary mode of expression, are but trivial accidents, to whichdistance is still nearness, and nearness is still distance. 

Their love is a property of eternal elements. It is fated as the unionof magnetic powers, it obeys chemic laws of irresistible combination. They are Isabel and Theophil, --that is their love; they are in the worldtogether, --that is their marriage. 

But passion will not be all day a tragedian. He has many moods. He is agreat wit, --how bright, how bright, he makes the brain!--a merrycomrade, a little, tender, silly child; and these two sad ones laughedtogether, too, in the still woods, --for was not the most exquisitehumourist in the world their companion, love, who is all things byturns, and all things wise?

And they feasted together, wine and great grapes, spread out on theearth's green table; and they called each other silly, beautiful names, and they feigned sad little glad stories--and called the wood theirhome: this was their breakfast-oak, and that glade should be their greathall, and high, high up in yonder beech, where the squirrel was sitting, should be their secret little bed-chamber, hung in blue and green, witha ceiling of stars. They should climb it each night on a ladder ofmoonlight, and slide down from it each morning on the first strong raysof the sun. And sometimes if it frightened them with being too nearheaven, they would seek out a dell of fine moss and creep close togetherinto the arms of the kind earth-mother, and then sleep while the starskept watch. 

O, yes, it would be a wonderful life together. 

Then suddenly the child's play would cease, as the birds stop singingwith the coming of the stars, and silence would sweep over them again, and a great kiss would leap out of the silence, like a flame that lightsup heaven from north to south, and they would hang together, lost in ananguish of desire. 

The setting sun was turning the wood into halls of strange light, andspreading golden couches here and there in its deep recesses. 

"Theophil. .. " sighed Isabel. 

"Wife. .. " sighed Theophil--(ah! Jenny!) and then a voice that seemed tobe neither's, and yet seemed to be the voice of both, --a voice like adove smothered in sweetness between their breasts, --said, "Let us godeeper into the wood. "

Later, when the stars had come, two white faces came glimmering from theinnermost chancel of the wood's green darkness. They passed closetogether, still as phantoms among the trees, and when they came out onto the lane they stood still. 

"Theophil, " said one voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send foryou, will you promise me to come?"

"Isabel, " said another voice, "if I should be dying, and I should sendfor you, will you promise _me_ to come?"

And each voice vowed to the other, and said, "I would come, and I wouldgo with you. "

And all these words had once been Jenny's, but they had been Isabel'sfirst. 

CHAPTER XIX

PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS

As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terribleof all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is themost blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil andIsabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude ofinner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of timecould destroy. 

Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separatedlovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of manypoets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove suchlove a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment thatmust so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly andyet must loose their holds, --the fire that promised itself food inmemory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight andtouch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting throughcenturies of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts!

For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust ineach other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come ofno mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must beknowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledgein your short hour of revelation you must have learned so passionatelythat, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer aforgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-springof instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when youask: Is she beautiful?

Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but itis very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case ofIsabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm andhappy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the oneunchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow. 

It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love wasno longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impassioned peace ofgreat accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firmhands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects oftried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a pastin them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, noreason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need tosnatch and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a shortday for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity. 

It held but one lasting sadness, --that it might not be revealed toJenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially forconcealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was atmoments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, thoughunconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty. 

Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heartof, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from beingthe lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisibletrinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born underlike conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of astrange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love'sone unworthiness, its egoism. As the _égoisme à deux_ is finer than anegoism of one, so this _égoisme à trois_, if you will, is again finer byits additional inclusiveness. 

Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too. But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such aunion is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved bothIsabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and inthe love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that wasmore impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much thatit might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meetingin one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea. 

But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They hadvowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy, but only transfigure, after all, --yet the test was lightning; and forwhom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to winthem Paradise?

No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told. .. Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates ofchance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguardedmoment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise, --when we withdrawinto Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed, --and Jenny, by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse ofthem there. 

It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gonedown, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who forsome trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audiencewas already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, entering the building by the minister's private entrance into hisvestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and thelecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in thevestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all butthat they were once more alone and together; and as they sought eachother's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weakanguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed, --

"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!"

But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have foundme. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, Ilove to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help aman be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I couldbe for your sake, --and how strong!. .. But be strong for mine, be strongfor Jenny's sake. I love that best. " Then for a moment they stood lostonce more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, socalm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyesfor a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that darkhalf-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw backdead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they hadexpected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought themhere with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had onlyseen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms. 

Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shockhad been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she mustsit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dimreflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of littlebut that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good, and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, andbeneath was her little harmonium, --to-morrow night would be herchoir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forgetthat--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of thatdreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--howhappy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together inbrightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, thedarkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. Ifonly she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No!she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seenthem, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till shehad made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know. That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then shemight speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go, --shemust not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hallpresently, she must be there before them, --she must be quick, --she mustgo now. .. . 

As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled arecognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smileback at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white, and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her. 

She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the commonresentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw ahappiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguishwas too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she mighthave felt towards death, --it was a terrible fact, and in her good heartthere was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she feltthat it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her, --just as achild might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed tooyoung to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have lovedtheir love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!)

Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would havespared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs. Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearfuljoy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It wasthe poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons;but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now tounderstand it too. It was called a "Denial, " and began:--

 "We have met late--it is too late to meet, O friend, not more than friend! Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet, And if I step or stir, I touch the end. 

 In this last jeopardy Can I approach thee, --I, who cannot move? How shall I answer thy request for love? Look in my face and see. 

 "I might have loved thee in some former days. Oh, then, my spirits had leapt As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise! Before these faded cheeks were overwept, Had this been asked of me, To love thee with my whole strong heart and head, -- I should have said still. .. Yes, but _smiled_ and said, 'Look in my face and see!'

 "But now. .. God sees me, God, who took my heart And drowned it in life's surge. In all your wide warm earth I have no part-- light song overcomes me like a dirge. Could love's great harmony The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose, Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose? Look in my face and see--

 "While I behold, as plain as one who dreams, Some woman of full worth, Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's, Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth

 One younger, more thought-free And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget, With brighter eyes than these . .. Which are not wet-- Look in my face and see!

 "So farewell thou, whom I have known too late To let thee come so near. Be counted happy while men call thee great, And one beloved woman feels thee dear!-- Not I!--that cannot be, I am lost, I am changed, --I must go farther where The change shall take me worse, and no one dare Look in my face and see. "

The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabelrecited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jennyfelt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew itsdestination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the lastverse was fuller of pain than all the rest, --

 "Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine I bless thee from all such! I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine, Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch

 Of loyal troth. For me, I love thee not, I love thee not!--away! There's no more courage in my soul to say 'Look in my face and see. '"

When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that MissJenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance, and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presentlyreviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thoughtof the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge. 

"There, there, " he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when shewas strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled withsudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment toits close. 

Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jennyalong the few yards to home. 

"No, " said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that. It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of twopeople having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?"

Mr. Moggridge did. "And then, " he said, "Miss Strange has such a way ofgiving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear. "

"Yes; her voice, " said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears. "

When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of realanxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just apassing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness. She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly, but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terribleto think of two people having to part like that, " she said again. 

And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual. 

"But don't you hurry, Isabel, " said Jenny. "You and Theophil will notsee each other for a long time again. "

"Sleep well, " said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thoughtthere was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace. 

When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange, "said Isabel. 

"I think I will go and see her for a moment, " said Theophil. 

So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across herbed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed. 

"O Theophil dear, don't come, " she said; "it's only silly nerves. Goback to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear, like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No . .. It is nothing, --nothingbut nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night. "

And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jennyhad said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and ifpresently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because hedid not know the reason of her tears?

On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so thatTheophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny againtill the evening. 

CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH JENNY CRIES

Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as sheusually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but atlast, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs betweendinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat inher accustomed chair. 

She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and herwill was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmlychoke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her withkind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened itsarms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch oftenderness too vivid and she would break down. 

And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with truelove in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights. 

Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figuresthat was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day andnight with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying:"Meantime I bless thee . .. "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup towine . .. " Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from herin a dream. 

Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and wouldhave kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turnedthem to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him notto kiss her. 

"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if youkiss me I shall have no strength to say it. "

"Jenny!"

"Dear, " she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "Iwant to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'llbelieve that, won't you?"

Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the wholerevelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful painthat was all over her was the lightning from which they had willedto save her. 

"Theophil, " Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word, "I know that you love Isabel. "

"O Jenny!"

"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident. You didn't hear me. "

"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this. "

"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life isterrible, --like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, orIsabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other. Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me. But I think you should have trusted me, dear. "

"We longed to tell you, " said Theophil, with his head bowed in distressin Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absenttenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and hervoice was as if she were talking to herself. 

"We longed to tell you, " he repeated. 

"O I wish you had. "

"We feared it, dear. "

"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. Ihave never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all thetime. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine. .. . "

"But . .. " she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not toolate. I have kept it pure . .. For Isabel. I can give it to her, darling, with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. Wewere not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the womanof that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. Iam a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my faceand see. '"

The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jennyin silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and ofthe insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves toourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by thepowerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must thosetests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which weare composed!

One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs, another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow oldwe can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that havenever been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, byan emotion. 

A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the womanwho needs him most, --and in a crisis of choice he will probably choosethe latter. 

Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reservesto draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not sobrilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentimenton the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble aresome of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submergedin a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation. 

In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for herwas passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements hadnever, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love, which can never again be separated into anything but itself, --the truegold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenlysprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver, honey, and pearl. 

This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any lessreal, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the firsttime in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now ithad lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test itstruth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed asimple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had, from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heavenof dreams. 

Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those whounderstand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she becameconfirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil'slife. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite ofthose solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if, at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surelyonly because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget tocall it heaven. 

In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was somesuch turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions, which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself intowords that sounded unexpected even in his own ears. 

"Jenny, " he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that sheloves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly inthis moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can evertake your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gainto her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and Iwant no other woman to be my wife. "

Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and theysounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing againcould ever be so real as that!

"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your armswere so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife. ' You aredeceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you;I have nothing in the world but you, and if. .. If. .. "

"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seemnever to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again fromto-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. Iknow this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but itwill pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us bemarried soon, dear; let us wait no longer. .. "

Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all theappeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed herback to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring backEurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing facewithout feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for amoment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted tobe hers again. 

But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something beenkilled? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Thenthe misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which allkind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, andwith terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms. 

"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking. "

Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end ofhis life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was asthough all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she werebleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was thedeath-crying of a broken heart. 

CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED

Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny driedher tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forgetit; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown evenbright again, --bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold. 

And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day. Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were timeswhen his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturingfalsity, as she thought of Isabel. 

But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in thecommon way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soonshe was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed thatIsabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital. For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Letthat be our secret, dear, " she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabelwrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wroteto each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters. Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life itmust be more and more of a starlit background. 

So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was nowfinally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as theirlove grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate thatdate, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished bythat old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones. 

The admonition was not without cause, for it presently becamenoticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her oldmother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, shewas, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growingthinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outsidefriends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't lookinghalf the girl she used to be. 

She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms shewould coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thoughtnothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curiousexpression flash into her face and go again almost before she could markit. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly togaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her realface was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemnthoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of asad wish fulfilling itself. 

She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same lookthat Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to himreading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threwdown the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, "Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look inyour face?"

He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before hehad finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget. 

One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it wasgrowing. 

"It _is_ thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a triflerun down. You must see the doctor. "

Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soupsand port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms nofatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why didTheophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of thatexpression?)

And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as sheused to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not soavailable for running up and down stairs as it had been. 

Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked alittle grave, but finally, reassured, asked her if she had had ashock, --Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it, --declared her alittle run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribedphosphites and steel. 

Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began tocough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place forher. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quitemerry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers, --he was alreadybringing her flowers, --would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and readto her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love hadever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear. 

But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on thebosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood stillwith terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awfulthought which was behind the still look they gave each other was notquite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying overto herself, --

 "I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, where The change shall take me worse, and no one dare Look in my face and see. "

Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the mostdeath-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heardhim singing, it seemed not many streets away. 

"I must be very ill, dear, " said Jenny. "O my love, O my love. .. !"

Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the futurein them, when this cloud should have passed away; and for his sake Jennypretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away tobright skies and healing air, --though Jenny felt a little tired at thethought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growingcuriously accustomed. 

Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very cleverspecialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death hadnot yet obscured its tragedy, --though words like "tragedy" were notoften on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him. 

His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, itached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professionalcontempt for the "general practitioner" that made him silently cursewhat he called the "death-doctor, " as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of alldiseases, and master of none. "

"Two months ago, a month, " he thought, as he listened and listened for asound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wastedside, --"even a month, and I could have saved her. " And yet as he talkedto her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice. It was the will to live. 

"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said. 

Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment, --the other doctor had askedher that, too, --and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to. 

"O, that's all right, " said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" andagain he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest ofyours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month orsix weeks you'll be all right again. "

"Only a month or six weeks, " said Jenny, with a sinking voice. Shemeant--was that all that was left to her of life and love?

Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to thedoor and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand uponhis arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart diewithin him. 

"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "_Youmean that?_"

"My poor fellow, God knows what I would give to deny it. "

"She--is--going--to--die--_to die!_ It is impossible! Not Jenny!" andbetween that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as thoughbells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had beensitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over andover to himself, "Jenny is going to die. "

There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spiritinto a glass. "Drink this, " he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though ithad been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir likean opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned tothat decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jennywas not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. Ithelped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctorhas not told him that I am going to die. "

"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks, " she saidaloud, and tried to look as though she were happy. 

"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, lovemade blind instead of prophet-sighted. 

"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that brightair, " said Theophil. 

"Yes, dear, " said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily. 

Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something tome, Theophil?"

"What shall I read, dear?"

"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass, ' eh? It's such along time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago wecould never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?"

So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with thefantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go onliving, and must be treated like living folks, --for a little whilelonger; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under yourvery eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying. You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours, --they are goingto die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby, --youlaugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenlythe bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have youforgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say beforethey go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces everymoment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain toremember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask themeverything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die. "

Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for somedays old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but atlast she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from herand from each other. 

"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herselffrom that time, but she did not cry or break down. 

It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophilsometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to beno bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of thenight were theirs even in so sad a fashion. 

One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softlypushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophilhad assured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light inthe room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with herdark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raisedhimself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep somewhile yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fellinto a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny wassitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about herface, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly abouther, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud. Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms roundhis neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strengthof her poor little body seemed to pass into that kiss, so eager, soconvulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, littlegirl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, andwith eyes unearthly bright. 

"Theophil, " she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, "you know that I am going to die!"

He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned hishead close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself twogreat tears fell upon Jenny's cheek. 

But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in hervoice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got tobe borne. "

She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more andmore sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be somethingalmost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. Ithad come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less withfear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In herfancy she had seen her name: "_Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter ofJohn and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years_" and it had struck herthat the name was wrong. 

Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. Theworld would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amidall the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again toherself: "_Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of TheophilusLondonderry, aged twenty-one years_. "

Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some daystand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yetall that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, intwo of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to thosewho read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earthof long-wed, late-dying lovers. 

Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; theirlove had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a springsign, a star in the front of love's year for ever. 

Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wishhad been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brideshave seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ringthat hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder. 

Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget thatshe was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little homethat was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with hisunbearable grief to some other room. 

And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look onnow. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, souncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would situp in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowinglaugh to herself, --a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitaryplace. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin asentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almosthumorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a deadbird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she didnot know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of beingwell again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly donewith all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soonbe strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to bedifferent from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, andputting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiarhumanity into a being of another element, --an element we dread as thefish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon shewould have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longerJenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. Shewas going to die. 

It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died. She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once whenTheophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as ifshe would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up thepillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took hisface in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said. "Will you ever forget me?"

"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you. "

He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she heldhim close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For amoment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though thatwas the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life. 

Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to behumoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called withdreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she waspicking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to godownstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all thattime by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade herthat Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must notmind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a sillylittle girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see. '"

Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, andshe said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry, and struggled so hard to rise, that it seemed best to humour her oncemore. So, wrapt round with blankets, Theophil lifted her from the bedinto a great chair by the fire. Then she asked to be taken to look intoher bottom drawer. So they lifted her across to it, and opened it. Shedabbled with her hands aimlessly among its piteous treasures, laughinglow to herself. 

Suddenly a fit of coughing took her, and a great choking was in herthroat. She was seen to be battling for her breath. For an instant shedrew herself up, and lifted her hand as though she would wave farewell, smiled a faint little smile at Theophil, making, too, as if she wouldspeak. Then she fell back, her whole body relaxed, she had ceasedcoughing, and a wonderful sweetness was stealing over her face. She hadgone all alone into the darkness, and Theophil was alone in the world. 

CHAPTER XXII

THE TRYST LETHEAN

Jenny had gone into the darkness, and she had gone alone. Theophil hadnot gone with her. 

That he had remained behind meant certainly no selfish clinging to life, and indeed there was a sense, as was presently to appear, in which veryreally he had kept young love's old promise and died with Jenny. That hehad not literally fulfilled it was due to those physical conditions ofdying of which in the hour of that promise young love is happilyignorant; for the promise is usually made in moments of keenly consciousphysical life. Dying together is then figured, perhaps, as climbing handin hand the radiant topmost peak of life, with a last splendid leaptogether into some immortal morning; and such a marriage in death, alast union of two lives in some fiery consummation of dying, has beenthe lot of some lovers supremely blest. 

Some indeed there are whose last earthly moment is a vivid reassertionof the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to itslast golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at thelaughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, tothe last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like alight plunged into a stream. 

But for others the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks havealready brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the firststep into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; butwith a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, withsightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands, --that was notlove's meaning. 

And not only are the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before theydie, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes ofthe poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb andfoolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneaththeir very eyes, and they cannot understand, --cannot realise that this, _this_ is death. 

Except in moments of piercing agony, days and weeks afterwards, momentsthat were similarly soothed away again by that mysterious narcoticproperty which pain at its highest brings with it (pain at its highestbeing its own anaesthetic), Theophil never realised that Jenny had died, and least of all at the moment when she was dying. Long after heremembered how he had said to himself: "There is Jenny dying, dying. Afew more seconds and she will be beyond the sound of your voice forever. Call to her; she can still, perhaps, hear you. O my Jenny, myJenny! Louder, louder, --hold her tighter, tighter, --she is slippingaway. O God, she is slipping away. No love can hold her back. My Jenny, my Jenny!"

And all the time he had been curiously calm, almost unfeeling, --as onestanding stupefied in the presence of fate. The air seemed full ofboding sounds, echoes of low thunder, as from a distant world in thethroes of portentous change; and he told himself mechanically that heshould know the meaning of those sounds some day. He should wake up soonfrom this unnatural torpor of pain to an empty house of life, throughthe cold halls of which he would seek in vain for Jenny for evermore. 

Meanwhile, he suddenly found himself standing with his back to the firein the lighted study, talking to Mr. Moggridge, who, late as was thehour, had called for news, and had stayed on from a perception that theyoung minister had best have some one to talk to as far into themorning as he would go on talking. They were talking in a business-likeway of Zion; and Theophil was smoking cigarette after cigarette. He wasterribly clear-headed and bright-witted, and Mr. Moggridge looked at himsometimes with a sort of fear. 

It was about three in the morning when the door was softly opened byMrs. Talbot. 

"Will you come now, and see our little girl?" she said, with a voicethat could say no more. 

Theophil followed her, and, still in a dream, he stood in Jenny's room, grown strangely solemn and sweet since he was last there, --was it athousand years ago? And there was Jenny lying asleep with a wonderfulsmile on her face. She had a little gold chain round her neck and awhite crysanthemum in the bosom of her night-gown, and you thought ofsome princess lying in enchanted sleep in an Arabian night. It seemed solight a sleep and yet somehow so eternal. You stept softly, you spokelow, lest you should awaken her--not carelessly shall one disturb thatimperious slumber. 

Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny'sbrow. She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess uponwhose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze. The pain which had filledthese weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of somemysterious ennoblement. She had been found "worthy to die. " In thepeerage of God's creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved. The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face anddoubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny. 

But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greaterthan we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not younglove, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away thepotencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, thoughsorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, allthe force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is theterrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death. 

Pity her, Jenny--speak one word to her. Hearken to her sobs as shekneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heartthat knows no tears?

Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the soundof mortal tears? Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands toeach and lead them away with you? They are praying to follow you, onlyto be with you, wherever you are. 

And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother hadstill some sure communication with the soul of her dead child. Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lovercould gain. She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were stillreally alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach. 

But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words thatJenny could not hear them. He talked to her as though she were a pictureof herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, hesymbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain. 

Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that thisicy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that littletender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the wordsof a song, it was marble now. 

"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, neverforget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven. Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you gladsomewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment lookinginto my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead, Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back tome, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall findeach other, _must_ find each other some day. I shall be so true, Jenny, --will you be true to me in heaven?"

Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold yearsthat lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what aweary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there wasJenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whosesorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fiftyyears farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and shewould meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all. 

But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is ittoo late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly fromthe earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but sheis fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenwardjourney hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will atlast light up the dark portal--

 "I'll take his hand and go with him To the deep wells of light; As unto a stream we will step down, And bathe there in God's sight. "

But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of darktraps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, wasthat the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, hadTheophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon hereyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But thedoor had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had alreadywandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to miss her. 

When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one shouldstand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to standstill here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then--and maybethe dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He couldwait a little while and see. For a little he could live--and listen. 

CHAPTER XXIII

JENNY'S LYING IN STATE

But there were others besides those who stood so near who mourned Jenny, passers-by on the road of friendship, who would miss her sunshine in thestreets, and carry with them one bright thought the less for that brightface that death had thus blown out. There were especially some littlepeople to whom death was as yet hardly even mysterious, but was merelyperplexing, like many other grown-up things in which their parents wereinterested. These were the little scholars of Jenny's Sunday-schoolclass, to whom simple Jenny had been a personage, quite a great lady, full of gentleness. To these Jenny was "Teacher, " a name of gentle awe;and to these Teacher was as deeply dear as anyone can be to veryyoung hearts. 

Jenny had felt like a little mother to these little ones, and when shelay ill her thoughts would often go to them, while from them would cometiny presents to show how sorry they were that Teacher was ill. 

Several times before she grew too ill, Jenny had had her favourites upin her room on Sunday evenings, to read Bible stories with her, and hadsent them away happy with magnificent text-cards, that had hitherto beenthe arduously won rewards of "attention" and the practice of suchschool-time virtues over many weeks. 

Now, when they heard that Teacher was dead, they felt a vague sorrow. They knew that people who died were never seen at school any more, andthat people always burst out crying when anyone died; so they criedbitterly, these little girls, and the hearts of one or two of themperhaps really ached for a little while. One of them asked the newteacher, if they would meet their old teacher in heaven, and was told"Yes, if they were good girls, "--which was something to be good for. 

Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercingsmell of lilies which still clung there--unless it were Theophil'sfancy--for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by herSunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and foursto look at Teacher for the last time. 

This was the third day, and Jenny was already in her coffin. The firstbloom of death, that light that lingers awhile in the face like a sunsettranquil and blessed, a smile of immortal promise in the very moment ofmortality, had faded. Jenny's face by this was really dead, a mask ofdrawn and sunken wax. She seemed now some fantastic doll, some ghastlywaxwork image of death such as we see carried on the stage in tragicplays. The reality of death had gone with the coming of its funerealtrappings. But the little girls, who had to be lifted up one by one togaze with curious, scared faces into that harsh box, deeper and deeperinto which, as through beds of flowers and veils of gauze, Teacher wassinking, knew nothing of these thoughts. They looked and wondered inhushed bewilderment, and went their ways. It was evidently an occasionwhen children were to keep more than usually quiet--and was it reallyTeacher in that strange deep box? It was rather meaningless, but it wascertainly very strange and solemn, and you were allowed to cry. 

Of the others who came to see Jenny, I shall not speak, --the vulgarsight-seers, the creepy old women, connoisseurs in beautiful death, forwhom a neighbour's funeral was like an invitation to the grand opera, but on whom perhaps one should not be too severe, for even such coarsesensitiveness to a mystery is the crude beginning of the poetic. 

The night before Jenny was given back to the elements Theophil dreamed adream, and afterwards he liked to think that he had dreamed it whileJenny's body was still in the house with him, for then it might beinterpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its finalrelease from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, asan artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster. 

Theophil dreamed that he and some friends were gay together in a room, just before setting out for a theatre; and as they laughed and talkedthere came a little tapping on the wall, so that they grew silent andlistened. Then through the wall was heard a faint but glad little voicespeaking. It was Jenny's voice. 

"I can hear you all, " she said; "you are off to the theatre. I wish Iwere going with you. Never mind, we are not so far away from each otheras you think. I am only on the other side of a wall. "

And Theophil awoke on a bright wintry morning, with those words still, it seemed, in the room. 

"I am only on the other side of a wall!" Was it but the metaphor-makingof dreams, which will so often take our forgotten speculations anddramatise them for us into reality, or was it indeed a message? Aninstinct which was unamenable to reason, and which was perhaps only adesire, told him it was a message; and it was no less a message thoughit were merely a pictorial symbol of a sense, which was already his inthe daytime, of a new and very real nearness to Jenny. 

He had slept right through that night out of sheer bodily weariness. Weeks of watching and anguish had worn him out, and he never knew thatthe poor old mother had laid a benediction on his sleep, looking in uponhim as he slept, the only waking being in that house of sleep. 

"He will wake soon enough, poor boy!" she had said, as she went oncemore to watch till daylight by the side of the other sleeper. 

"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, myJenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?"

So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise thedead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though evenJenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fearfor Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creedtold her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied herfaith, and her love made her a Sadducee. 

And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that wassorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. Forwhile Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had beenmuch tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of thedarkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her motherthe promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterwardburied in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy onthe old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that theway of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet thedisintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destructionsuch as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give. 

If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of herbody, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers offire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and onthe wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragranceabout the world. 

And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of amysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quitereturned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptibleJenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour whenthe soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance ofimagination. 

And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of theflames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of thegreat consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jennywas no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was oncemore filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, itbrought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark andlonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were coveredwith sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through thecleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, andwas already about the business of the dreaming spring. 

And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. Itsaved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which hadhaunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. Howevermorbid his fancies might become, _desiderium_ could never take any butbeautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images ofcorruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacombor charnel. 

She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned againwhence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; shehad touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, she had made little everlasting memories with her hands, --that was herhistory; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, andshe had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked aflower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No oneas long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "Thiswas Jenny!"

No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moonrises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one'spath one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at thewindow, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknownhappiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when alovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all highmoments, then can one say, "There, listen! _that_ was Jenny. "

Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophilremained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side. 

As he lay down to rest that night, his eyes fell with a sudden sense offreshness upon the familiar Botticelli's "Mother and Child, " which hungover his fireplace; and a need that could never be fulfilled awoke inhis soul. If only Jenny could have left him a little child, --a littlegirl! He had not seemed so lonely then. 

It was so he thought; yet perhaps Jenny's child would but have deepenedhis loneliness, like a bird singing in a garden where our love walkedlong ago. Yet the cry was from his heart, and the longing brought withit his first tears. "O Jenny, " he sobbed, "if only you had left me alittle child!"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--MESSAGE FROM JENNY

If every inclination of his heart had not desired it too, Theophil wouldhave gone on living at 3 Zion Place, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; for nowhe was literally all she had left in the world, and what greater joyremained for either than just to sit close by the fire and talkof Jenny?

3 Zion Place was now a little chapel of memory, where a bowed ancientwoman and a sad-faced young man kept up perpetual services to the holydead. A woman of her own years, also acquainted with grief, came tocompanion the old woman, a sort of lay sister in this little monasteryof grief. It was so piety began, and thus piety is purest and tenderestin the worship of the dead. Everything in that house which had taken theimpress of Jenny's fingers, been Jenny's to use or handle, remainedexactly as and where Jenny had placed it. They were as yet as fragrantof Jenny as a fresh-gathered flower of its own perfume. In a very realsense indeed Jenny had not died, or she was coming to life again as shehad never lived before; and it was no merely idealised Jenny who washenceforward to fill up all her lover's thoughts and speak to him inevery sight and sound, but just the human Jenny, with her faultsand all. 

On these--such little faults!--Theophil ever loved to dwell. They savedJenny from becoming an abstraction, a saint. Even those bitter littlequarrels which all lovers must suffer, --how sweet they seemed now!

The old mother's method was no doubt again different from herson-in-law's. She would never have admitted that Jenny had a fault. Such is the difference in reality between the new idealism and the old. 

In such small matters as the minutiae of mourning that difference wasagain illustrated. Theophil could permit himself no outward insignia ofsorrow which he could not wear for ever. Already his profession hadclothed him in black, and it was only for him that his black seemed nowto gain a deeper distinction; but such ugly symbols of beautiful memoryas that note-paper whose diminishing edge of blackness is rather acynical witness of a graduated forgetfulness, were not for a real grieflike his. As if sorrow, while it may and will change, can ever end! Why, in the world of faithful hearts, men and women have not yet dried theirtears for Romeo and Juliet!

Theophil conceived this grief that had come to him as one more activityadded to his life till life should end. He knew that it would notoutcast joy, but that it would live side by side with it, that it mustalternate with joy for it to go on living. Jenny's death was not goingto be less sad, less a factor of the eternal tragedy, at the end of ayear, --that he might go to a theatre once more, as some widows joyouslydon colours, when the clock strikes the end of a year of lost dances. 

For it was not Jenny alone that had died, but it was a consolation toTheophil in those hours of self-torture which are among the earliest andmost cruel developments of grief, to realise how much of himself haddied with her, after all. It was not merely the apathy of the firstweeks that told him this, the sense of vacuity, of uselessness in allthings, but the sense that never left him, even when he had awakened toan activity he had never known before, that nothing really mattered, however vigorously he might seem to act to the contrary, since Jennyhad gone. 

It was with difficulty sometimes that he could take important issueswith necessary seriousness, for, whatever the odds of life henceforwardmight be, what was there worth gaining now that Jenny was lost? Couldany energy or haste save Jenny from dying? That had happened. The worsthad happened. All the terror life had to appal the human spirit had beenfaced, in that moment when the doctor's hand upon his shoulder had toldhim Jenny was to die. His eyes had looked on the Medusa-face of lifethat turns the bravest to stone, and he was no longer vulnerablehumanity. 

On the battle-field of existence he bore a charmed life, and sometimesas he moved among his fellows he felt a certain sense of the unfairnessof his advantage in this respect, and paused to pity those who couldstill be so eager, so tragically set upon, this little issue. Thevirulence of those enemies whom he was already making and who were tomultiply as his activities awakened again, seemed particularly pathetic, and he would smile in sad amusement at their quaint little efforts tohurt him. (No man is so strong for this world's fight as he who has laidup his treasure in heaven; and when the mystic condescends to the commontrades of life he is an easy master. ) It meant so much to them, solittle to him. He was a humbug, he was a hypocrite, he wasn't even agood speaker, he was an ignoramus! Was he? All right. They might thinkso if they chose. It hardly interested him. He had been sitting drawingangels, and somehow their irrelevant voices had broken in upon him. "Another was with me. "

Really, even for Jenny's sake, it seemed hardly worth while to fight sopoor a world! Was the fame that such a world could give a distinctionone would seek for Jenny? Would not Jenny smile in heaven at the toyhonours of such a world?

On the other hand, there was something repellent to his once ambitioussoul, in the thought that such a world might seem to have the victory;and, therefore, when the first numbness had left him and the colours andsounds of things were once more coming back, he threw himself withgalvanic vitality into the work that lay to his hand, and particularlyinto those political activities for which his gift of speech and hispower of organisation fitted him. 

Two months after Jenny's death, having spoken at a great meeting on somemomentous question of the hour, he found himself the acknowledged leaderof the Radical, rather forlorn, hope in Coalchester, and before longinvitations were coming to him to help on the same hope in other towns. Never in his life--and he used often to meditate on the fact withwonder--had he been so vital, so efficient, so brilliant. His powers hadacquired a firmness, an alertness, a force of influence and attraction, they had never possessed before. Of a sudden he found himself mature, acalm master of his gifts. 

Yet those who sat near him at those meetings might have noticed that ashe sat down, pale amid plaudits, and crossed his hands upon his knees, and while his political colleagues were complimenting him to theaudience on the mellow thunder of his political oratory, he was smilingfurtively to himself. "It's all very funny, isn't it, Jenny?" he wassaying in his heart. 

Indeed it was hardly recognisable to himself as a fancy that whenever hespoke Jenny was somewhere in the audience. Sometimes a remote face mightbear a chance resemblance to her, and he would humour himself with thethought that that was Jenny. For, with that self-consciousness which nomodern mind can escape, he found a certain sad pleasure sometimes innoting the tricks grief played with him, loving and encouraging all itsfancies--if fancies indeed they were. 

When at other times he tried to think clearly, to strip himself of theillusions, as others would no doubt call them, in which he now lived, his thinking rather confirmed than dispersed them; and the more hepondered, the more he failed to realise that Jenny was dead, the surerbecame his consciousness that she was nearer to him (a very part of himas it were) than she had ever been in the days when others could stillhear her voice and note her presence in a room. Her very death had givenhim a paradoxical certitude of her immortality. 

Yet this recognition of her presence, on some plane of spiritualapprehension, was none the less consistent with a piercing sense of herloss on the plane where love once moved in visible beauty. That heavenlylover in him was able to give none of the comfort of its assurance tothe earthly lover. That the eyes of the spirit could touch her, broughtno healing to the eyes that at midnight would look up from the desk inTheophil's study to Jenny's empty chair, no touch of her to the handsthat were so idle and empty now. 

Yet there were little services these hands might still do for her. There in her own little room her own books still stood in their places. These could be taken care of, her little desk could still be kept as shehad left it, with her pen laid down as she had last laid it. There werenote-paper and envelopes, and ink and blotting-paper, all ready, if someday, by a miracle--who could tell?--she might steal into that room andwant to leave a message. There should be fresh flowers for her to findthere too if she did come. 

And that new edition of Scott which was not finished issuing when shewent away, she would find that complete when she came back. Her littlecollection of fairy books too--she was sure to glance at that! and thenshe would find two or three new ones there finer than any of the oldones; alas! so many beautiful books kept coming out now that shehad gone. 

Yet somehow she might see them, after all, if they were taken softly tothat little room and laid on that table altar. When it was quite surethat no one was looking or listening, the shy soul might steal out ofthe air and turn the pages with a sigh. 

Just so some savage lover might bring gifts of fruit and coloured beads, and bright plumed birds, to the grave of his dead love, for the futureanthropologist to draw his moral of the childishness of all humanidealisms. 

One day, as Theophil had stolen quietly into that room on some suchvotive errand, an impulse had come to him to open the drawer of thedesk. There might be some message for him there. Any writing of the deadwe have never read before is a message. 

Among various odds and ends, he came first upon one of those littletradesmen's account-books interleaved with bad blotting-paper in whichthe housewife writes her orders week by week. 

It was full of Jenny's writing, and though the entries were merelyweekly repetitions of the same string of groceries:--"2 lbs. Of thebest tea, " "6 lbs. Loaf sugar, " "6 nutmegs, " and so on, --yet, "the handbeing hers, " they made a record that could only be read through blindingtears; and one page which bore a severe little note, to the effect thatthe tea had been far from good of late, read almost like a personalrevelation. 

Theophil kissed the page, and, replacing the book, took up another, andhis heart leapt to find it was a little diary. 

He hesitated for a moment. It seemed wrong to read it, and yet he knewthat Jenny's soul held nothing she would not have shared with him, andhe was so hungry for a word from her though it were only a word outof the past. 

The entries were not many nor long, but it smote his heart to find howlarge a space his name, his interests, his successes, filled there. Theentries of honour were little heart-notes of evenings togetherespecially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, andsometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was sohelpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever littlecriticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflectionof her own, --which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that thelittle child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independentpersonality, after all. 

As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture ofpain. The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discoveredTheophil's love for Isabel. It was very brief, just a sob: "Haverealised that I am no fit wife for Theophil. And yet how I love him!"

As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him withunbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body cryingits heart out against his. At that moment he would have enduredcenturies of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; andan awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of hismind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: thethought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it waswho had--killed Jenny. "She seems to have had a shock, " a voice wassaying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock. "

A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in theouter darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, nowsprang into vivid light again in company with that thought. In thatmoment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath hehurled her back again into the dark. It was she, _she_ who had madehim--kill Jenny!

But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurableby some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish todeceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himselfthat this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed nowilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, whohad planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny. 

Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardisethe happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold?Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts?

But a voice said--was it Jenny's?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love byreason of no theory. It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever yoube, who must support that accusation. Theophil and Isabel loved by thecompelling dispensation of the stars. They fought their destiny, and hadconquered it. It was you, ye stars, not they, that killed Jenny. 

And this was true: but still the little figure sobbed at Theophil'sside, as again and again it would come and sob there, till Theophil'sown heart broke, --that old death-crying of Jenny's broken heart. 

CHAPTER XXV

JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE

After Jenny's death two letters had come for her from Isabel, who had noknowledge of what had been happening to her friends of New Zion. 

There is something peculiarly sad about the letters that for a littletime go on coming for the dead. Perhaps nothing more simply brings homethe fact that they are no longer with us. Even little bills, circularsoffering new spring goods at sale prices, come charged with pathos, andTheophil smiled at his own folly as he kept them all. Sad little _posterestante_! Will the letters ever be called for?

Theophil did not open the letters, but as days went by and no more came, he sometimes found himself taking them from their drawer and looking atthem. Isabel's handwriting, though his soul would not confess it tohimself, still held the power of a rune over his heart. 

Had no traitor thought ever whispered deep down in the darkness of hisconsciousness that the way was now open to Isabel? Such thoughts indeedhad come to him, but unwelcomed, involuntarily, as those foul thoughtswhich will sometimes torture the pure, or those base thoughts which mayappal the noble. 

The mind, like the body, has its foul humours, which can only beaccepted with patience as a part of the inscrutable mechanism of humanorganisms. In moments of anger this filth and poison of the mindsometimes comes to the surface to wrong us--for it is not us, it is intruth just all that we are not. 

Thus at times in Theophil's mind, that was one prayer of faithful lovefor Jenny, the thought of Isabel would steal, like--so his sternfaithfulness pictured it--a fair devil in a church. Yet, if he openedone of those letters he knew there would ascend from it a cloud ofsubtle incense, which would . .. Well, which he must never again breathe. 

So he would replace them in their drawer, and again, some other day, take them out once more. 

Perhaps, after all, it might be his duty, the mere duty of a friend, toopen them. What if Isabel should be ill, should be needing him . .. Should be dying!

But still the fanaticism of his sorrow conquered, and still week afterweek they remained unread. 

Meanwhile, Isabel was living her life as she had lived it before she hadheard of New Zion, with the difference of an internal sense ofcompletion which her love had brought. Need one say that she had herhours of loneliness and longing, when she would have exchanged athousand years of love in heaven for a touch of Theophil's hand uponearth; but these she knew how to conquer, and for most days that unionof two separated hearts remained to her as real as when it had beenvowed in those silent woods. 

At the very moment when Jenny was dying, and Theophil had thrust Isabelaway into the furthest, highest, starlight of memory, she was thinkinghow real their union was, how near he seemed!

CHAPTER XXVI

FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY

 Knowing the quick but little love Much mention of the dead. 

I hesitate further to continue that history of a grief of which, nevertheless, this book has now little heart or purpose to be other thanthe record, and, as what I shall write in this chapter must seemmeaningless and wearisome to all but those who belong to the greatSecret Society of Sorrow, it were no doubt just as well that those whohave known nothing but joy should follow their natural impulse and leaveit unread. I confess, too, that I should feel the more comfortablewithout the regard of their happy, ignorant eyes. 

Sorrow is a mysticism, and to talk of it to those who have never knownthe initiation of tears is like talking alchemy to a child. Sorrow, too, is an aristocracy, and when Theophil came to realise that, as Jennyhad been found worthy to die, he had been found worthy to suffer, itseemed to him almost vulgar only to have been happy. Happiness is such amaterialist, a creature of coarse tastes and literal pleasures, a_bourgeois_ who has not yet attained the rank of a soul. The influenceof sorrow on the individual is much what the influence of Christianityhas been upon the world. Christianity, no doubt, has robbed us ofmuch--but then it has given us sorrow; it has taken away the sun, but ithas brought us the stars. It is only in the starlight of sorrow that webecome conscious of other worlds. The sun flatters our own little worldwith the illusion of a transitory importance; the stars show it itsplace in the universe, and teach it a nobler meaning for itself. 

No consciousness of his gifts had ever given Theophil any such sense ofhis belonging to the chosen and dedicated minority of mankind as thisinitiation into the Secret Society of Sorrow. He had been chosen torepresent a sacred order. He stood for no lesser interests than those ofLove and Death. Though he were to represent Coalchester in the House ofCommons, what honour were there in that to one already somysteriously honoured?

Tears bring a strange new sight to the eyes, and "a new perception bothof grieving love" made Theophil see, and love to see, many things in theworld he had never noticed before. His eyes were opened to behold themany mourners who go about the streets, the widows who walk in darkness, and all the shapes of blackness moving phantom-like through the colouredtraffic; not all true children of sorrow, indeed, though wearing itshabit, but, true or not, symbols of the power and majesty of death inthe world. For the involuntary honour paid to death even by theignorantly busy, and happy, he kept ever a grateful and a jealous eye;and as some funeral _cortège_ passed like a dream, Charon's barge amidall the motley craft of merchandise and pleasure, he would watch sternlyto see if the fat and prosperous moment would do honour to the carriagesof the king. For a bowed head or a doffed hat he felt a personalgratitude. And, since Jenny died, he seemed to be always meeting thatphantom procession in the streets. 

Once, as he passed along the High Street, he had noticed a crowd round adying horse. He stood with the crowd a moment, and then went on his way. In an hour's time he repassed the place, and there was the dead horselying solitary on the side of the street; but he noted with a curiousgladness that some hand had covered it reverently with a horse-cloth. "So honoured is death, " he mused to himself, "that even the humblestanimal on which he shall have set his seal is held sacred from thecommon day, and shall not be gazed upon heedlessly by the passer-by. "This seemed the greatest honour he had known paid to the king!

The fascination with which from this time death and all that related toor remotely suggested it absorbed him, was, he reflected one day with asurprised recognition of the paradox, no longer the fascination of hateor dread, but almost love. Death, the arch-enemy of joy, the assassin ofyouth, the murderer of Jenny, --Death had robbed him of his life's onetreasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listeningfor his step, like a lover. 

Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps theexplanation was very simple. Theophil loved death because Jenny haddied, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as hewould have loved life had Jenny gone on living. By dying Jenny had madedeath beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so manyallusions to Jenny. 

Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had onlyheard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hearslistlessly of Peru. But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books ofthe world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny hadgone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, andevery little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some newemigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny's sake. Besides, some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have newsto tell him of the dark land. One would walk far, would listen late forsuch precious tidings. 

Did such tidings ever come? Yes, some had even seen their loved onesagain, shining strangely on the air. Why did Jenny never come like that?How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of thesilence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream, had ever come. Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticedsights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us inthe deaf and dumb language of the dead. Perhaps it was they who led usto passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingersto bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message ofhope we never dreamed had come from them. Or might it not happen thatthe dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:--

 "Is death's long kiss a richer kiss Than mine was wont to be, Or have you gone to some far bliss And straight forgotten me?"

Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift offaithfulness might some day be a burden to her. .. 

This love of death was no mere morbid absorption. It was but one of theactivities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple hadbecome "dear as the temple's self, " and his jealousy for those honourspaid to death was only one expression of his eager watchfulness for thesigns of human faithfulness. 

Not all unrewarded was that watch. The world held some faithfulhearts, --let us not ask how many, --lovers of invisible faces and voicesheard no more, men and women who still shared their joys and sorrowswith unseen comrades, and drank the cup of life as a sacrament ofremembrance. 

This sharing with the dead seemed to Theophil the essential offaithfulness, --faithfulness taking many forms, sometimes maybemisrepresentative of itself, and seldom perhaps informing itsconventional externals. 

A time will come in the profoundest griefs when those rituals to whichyoung grief is so eager to vow itself will grow lifeless andconventional, the daily tasks of remembrance become as the told beads ofpattered prayers. Let the worshipper of relics beware lest histreasures some day turn on his hands to so much irksome lumber, and truesorrow be thus humiliated. 

No! the service for the dead which is most likely to remain a vitaloffering of the heart is not the ceremonial sorrow of speciallyconsecrated times and seasons, but rather the simple longing in hours ofjoy that _they_ could have been with us. To think of our dead friends asalways in their shrouds is a way of remembrance which we shall not longhave heart or even interest to follow. It is only by taking them to ourfeasts, keeping up with them the same old human companionship, that wemay hope to keep the dead as friends. A modern poet has written eightlines which were of great comfort to Theophil, --

 "You go not to the headstone As aforetime every day, And I who died, I do not chide, Because, dear friend, you play;

 "But in your playing think of him Who once was kind and dear, And if you see a beauteous thing, Just say: 'He is not here. '"

Here it seemed to Theophil was the whole duty of faithfulness. The deadknow that if we remember them in our hours of joy, they are indeedremembered; and if they know anything at all, they will understand thewaywardness of sad hearts better than sad hearts understand themselves. 

Yet, indeed, save in the exercise of his faculties, Theophil had no joyto reproach himself with. Surely returning spring, with its terribleexuberance of warm life, was no joy. Perhaps he had looked on Jennylying dead with less anguish than he one day beheld an apple-tree thickwith blossom in the hot sun. Yes! the world had the heart to go on, tobud and build, and sing, --though Jenny was gone. And in that brightspring, see horrible and useless age still hobbling out into the beam!What was life but one huge Mephistopheles laugh beneath the windows ofour dreams!

That spring James Whalley persuaded Theophil to walk with him for a weekof country lanes far beyond Coalchester, letting him talk of Jenny allthe time. Jenny had never been here! If only Jenny could have seen thatview! Jenny had never known that flower! Did he remember those versesfrom James Thomson:--

 "The chambers of the mansions of my heart, In every one whereof thine image dwells, Are black with grief eternal for thy sake. 

 "The inmost oratory of my soul, Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead, Is black with grief eternal for thy sake. 

 "I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross, With eyes for ever fixed upon that face, So beautiful and dreadful in its calm. 

 "I kneel here patient as thou liest there; As patient as a statue carved in stone, Of adoration and eternal grief. 

 "While thou dost not awake I cannot move; And something tells me thou wilt never wake, And I alive feel turning into stone. "

Strange joy of sad poetry for sad hearts!

Experience indeed was now divided for Theophil into what Jenny had notseen or known and into what she had seen and known; and it was one ofthe tricks of his grief, as time went on, to confuse the two. Sometimeshe would think that Jenny had been with him at a certain place, orperhaps had read a certain book which, on taking thought, he knew shecould never have seen. 

Allied perhaps to this confusion was the fancy that possessed him oncertain days that he caught glimpses of Jenny in little flitting figuresof women about the streets. A sudden poise of the head, the way of doingthe hair, a trick of walk, --just a flash and gone again; thoughsometimes he was haunted with more persistent resemblances, whichbrought him a curious mixture of joy and pain. And this perhaps is theplace to record what only those acquainted with grief will understand, and not all of those, --for grief has many contradictory fashions. 

Till he had loved Jenny, women had played little or no part inTheophil's life; but with Jenny's death he found, to his surprise, thatthe idea of woman was strangely sweet to him. His eyes were drawn afterwomen in the street, and he found himself longing sometimes for somewoman on whose shoulder he might lean his head and weep out his grieffor Jenny! He loved death because Jenny had died; was he to love womenbecause Jenny had been a woman? Perhaps his feet had wandered indangerous paths at this time, had it not been for the restrictions whichhis calling laid upon him. 

These, however, did not deny him the theatre, which it had been part ofhis programme at New Zion to advocate, though there was seldom anythingworth seeing at Coalchester Theatre Royal. Yet sometimes a good Londoncompany would call there on its provincial progress, and it chanced oneday, looking into a shop window, that Theophil caught sight of aphotograph of a woman that startled him with its remarkable resemblanceto Jenny. It was the prima donna of a Gaiety burlesque. Such was thestrange shape Jenny had for the moment taken!

For the first time after her death Theophil was at the theatre thatevening. The bright lights and the music pierced him as with swords. Once more he saw that apple-tree thick with blossom in the hot sun. Yethis fancy found grim spells to lay the insolent ghost of life, and deathever at his side whispered that all this light and music and dancing wasfor but a little while; that those gay rouged faces, so confident inlaughing beauty, and all those nimble shapes, were to the eye that hadlooked beyond life already stark in their coffins, with chin-clothsabout their nerveless jaws. Surely the lover would trip in the shroudthat was plainly to be seen from his feet to his lips!

Like sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from hisimagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, andeverywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange anticsof the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought ofhimself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon todeath and Jenny. 

Suddenly the theatre sprang back to life again with the entrance of theprima donna. Yes, the resemblance was even greater than in thephotograph. She was a little taller and more heavily built than Jenny, and it was not Jenny's voice; but for the rest, she _was_ Jenny. Thefascination of watching her was terrible. It seemed impossible that oneform could so mockingly resemble another, and yet be so hopelesslysomeone else. Theophil could hardly bring himself to believe that thewoman yonder with Jenny's eyes and mouth and hair had never even heardof Jenny's name. Surely, if he were to come and look into her face, shewould recognise him at once, and the old common interests would rise toher lips as of old. 

Theophil went again to the theatre the next night, and again the next, which was the last of the company's stay in the town; and the spell ofthe false Florimel grew so strong upon him that at the close of thefinal performance he sent up his card to the actress, and presently, asin a dream, found himself stumbling among scenery and dipping underbeams on his way to the actress's room. If she were only as like Jennyclose to, he felt he must follow her to the end of the world; and indeedthe illusion still held as he entered the little mirrored room, smellingof powder and littered with laces and silks, --fancy little Jenny hereamong the grease-paints and the bouquets! It was only with the lack ofrecognition in the polite welcome the actress gave him that the illusionbegan to waver, or was it only that Jenny had forgotten him?

So possessed had he been with the hallucination, that he had notthought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech cameto him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words ofsalutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, andmotioned to her attendant to leave them alone. As the door closed, Theophil had determined to tell her the simple truth. 

"I have to ask your pardon, " he began, "for a very strange intrusion. The reason of it is simply this. You are so like someone I love who isdead that I felt I could not rest till I had spoken to you. I trust youwill excuse me, and try to understand. Yes! you are terribly like her!"

The story appealed to the actress's instinct for romance, and sheentered into its spirit. Besides, the young clergyman was veryinteresting to look at, and the charm of sorrow was on his face. 

"An actress can hardly complain, " she answered, "of being taken forsomeone else, and though I don't know you, I feel that you have done mean honour. Am I indeed so like her? How strange it must seem to you!"

"It is very strange, " said Theophil, still fascinated. Then he told thisimage of Jenny the story of how Jenny had died. The tears came into theactress's eyes as he talked, and it was as though Jenny shed tears forJenny's death. 

"Poor little girl!" she said; "I am so sorry for you both. "

"But, " she continued presently, "you should both be very happy too--forit would be worth while to suffer for so beautiful a love. .. . I feelhappy, " she added half gaily, "even to resemble a woman who is sowonderfully loved. "

Theophil lingered on, still fascinated, till the actress suggested thathe should walk with her to her hotel. Arrived there, Theophil, to thepossible scandalising of Coalchester, accepted her invitation to afurther chat over supper; and when at last he was back at Zion Place, his heart was aware of a new comfort and a new pain. He had leaned hishead on a woman's kind shoulder, and she had let him talk and talk aboutJenny; but her shoulder had been warm, and it had been sweet to benear her . .. 

 "A creature might forget to weep who bore; Thy comfort long" . .. 

and Theophil went to sleep that night with the taste of honey upon hislips. 

But with the morning there came to him remorseful misgivings, and hetold himself that it had been one of the sophistries of the flesh, acall of the senses taking in vain the sacred name of Jenny; and then forhis comfort he remembered how the greatest of all lovers, Dante, hadcraved in like manner for the solace of "a very pitiful lady, veryyoung, " and had been similarly remorseful on account of his momentarypreoccupation with her. 

Taking down his "Vita Nuova, " he read: "_At length, by the constantsight of this lady, mine eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with hercompany; through which thing many times I had much unrest, and rebukedmyself as a base person: also, many times I cursed the unsteadfastnessof mine eyes, and said to them inwardly: 'Was not your grievouscondition of weeping wont one while to make others weep? And will ye nowforget this thing because a lady looketh upon you? who so looketh merelyin compassion of the grief ye then showed for your own blessed lady. Butwhat so ye can, that do ye, accursed eyes! many a time will I make youremember it! for never, till death dry you up, should ye make an end ofyour weeping_. '"

Moreover, Dante had married Gemma within a year of the death ofBeatrice, and had even lived so scandalously meanwhile as to bring downupon him the stern reproof of his friend Guido Calvancanti; yet theworld still regards him as the type of all faithful lovers. Faithfulness is an attitude of the mind, and all it touches turns toBeatrice. Yet--

 "Except by death, we must not any way Forget our lady who is gone from us. "

CHAPTER XXVII

ISABEL CALLING

If women were thus henceforth to influence Theophil, why might notIsabel, the woman whom Jenny had loved, be counted amongst them?

Isabel was the one woman in the whole world whom Theophil's faithfulnesscould not transform into Jenny. That it had been his fatal love for herthat had brought Jenny to her death, his reason, except in moments ofself-injustice, was robust enough to put aside. 

There are excuses that we owe to ourselves, and we have a right toexpect justice even from our own consciences. A sentimental conscienceis the most tiresome of all altruists, and wilfully to indulge inremorse that we have not justly incurred is to blunt our consciencesfor real offences. The best repentance for our sins is a clear-eyedrecognition of their nature, and the temptation in some flurry offeeling to take on our shoulders the mistakes of destiny with which wechance to have been involuntarily associated, is one to be resisted inthe interests of that self-knowledge which is the beginning ofself-development. Before we take the scourge in hand for our ownshoulders let us be quite sure that we have sinned. 

There were hours, particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in themiddle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, inwhich Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon whenhe had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration, "She seems to have had a shock"--"It was you who killed Jenny. "

These hours had to be supported as we support hours of purely physicalpain. The morning brought a saner, larger view. The tragedy of Jenny'sdeath was not to be so easily explained. In it were implicated moreaugust responsible causes, it was part of a more general tragedy; as theoriginal instinct to blame himself and Isabel was part of man's ancienttheological habit of making man the scapegoat of the universe. 

But as the thought of Isabel thus became bearable once more, it becamefor that very reason a thought the more faithfully to be resisted. 

It might become sweet. 

It was sweet!

One day the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, asIsabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that asJenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jennyherself. Besides, as he had realised no unfaithfulness to Jenny in hislove for Isabel during Jenny's life, there could equally be nounfaithfulness now that she was dead. Moreover, if Jenny still in somemysterious way kept watch over his life, she would understand his heartas she could never have understood it when she was alive. .. 

These thoughts brought deep sorrow to him for many days, during whichonce more he rebuked himself as "a base person, " but, curiously enough, in one who so despised the world and its opinion, it was an apparentlysuperficial consideration that was the mainstay of his faithfulness, against these disloyal suggestions of a life that was thus reawakeningin spite of himself. 

There were moments when he could conceive his going to Isabel, andasking her to share his life with him; but never could he endure thethought of her bearing that name which seemed so inviolably Jenny's. Even though Jenny had come to him in a dream and asked him to give hername to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny mightunderstand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minorityof faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and thecynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more illustration of humaninconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in someAegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowedmistresses, but with a wife it is understood to die. 

No! so long as the world lasted no other woman should steal her namefrom Jenny's grave. 

And this was an unassailable symbol. Here the vital principle of hisfaithfulness was entrenched as in an impregnable fortress. He would seeIsabel's heart break ere she should bear Jenny's name. 

Yet while he made the vow, his love for Isabel was musical as springwithin his soul, and he dared to tell himself that in God's sight he wasstill Isabel's as well as Jenny's. 

Thus it came about that one autumn day, when Isabel's letters had lainunopened through spring and summer, in one sudden impulse of meredesire he had opened and read them, --not as Jenny's letters, but asmessages for which he himself was hungering. He had released theincense, and as he kissed the dear writing, he momentarily forgot thatit was written to Jenny, and only remembered that it had come fromIsabel. In the snare of the incense he even accused himself for havingleft them unread so long, and then to think that nearly six months hadgone by since the second letter had brought its half-playful reproachfor forgetfulness. .. . "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle littleperson, after all. "

How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now. .. . Yes, ofcourse, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead . .. And Isabel was calling. 

Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel'swords--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in somesubtle air of hellish sweetness?

O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay inher bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breaththis cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover. 

Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once thestrongest and the weakest force in the world, --a power, indeed, thatprevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailestwhisper of the real. 

Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, butgo he must, he would. Yes! he was going. 

There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in thetrain; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, hisheart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire, --just tosee Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him tothink of anything beyond it. 

He would see Isabel again!

From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, shewould turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness. 

The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped himin a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing throughhidden orchards. 

Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you acrossthe night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep inthe rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across thesilent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like acamp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speedingthrough the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travellingrooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"?

Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel?

No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name!

He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would diewith the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need tothink of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted her asmuch as that. 

It was about half-past six as he reached London; and though it wasimpossible to call on her for some hours yet, Theophil drove straight toIsabel's little square, shuttered and still in the early-risen Londonmorning. His eyes chose the second storey for hers, and picked out twodainty windows as her rooms. He half expected to see the blind suddenlydrawn aside and her face, a sleepy flower, bloom through the curtains. 

He lingered awhile, loving each individual brick of the house with hiseyes, and then, kissing his hands to the sleeping windows, he rejoinedhis cab, which he had left at the street corner, shy of awaking thehushed square with its clatter. 

He gave Isabel till ten o'clock, which was perhaps hardly enough for ayoung London lady's toilette and breakfast, and then called. A pleasanthousemaid answered the bell, and told him that Miss Strange was away, and was not expected till to-morrow. 

Here was a surprise. He had never even thought of that possibility. 

Begging leave to write Miss Strange a note, he presently found himselfin Isabel's room. It was the same his eyes had blessed from the street. 

So this was Isabel's room! So evidently hers, her very self!

Isabel pictures, Isabel wall-paper, Isabel chairs, Isabel cushions, Isabel desk, Isabel books, Isabel bibelots, Isabel litter, --all Isabel. 

And there hung an arras portière over a doorway to the right of thefireplace. That was her bedroom! Dare he peep in? That was her littlebed. Would the housemaid catch him if he slipped in and left a kiss onher pillow? By the mirror was a grotesque little china monster with hismouth full of hat-pins. He stole one for a memory. Over a chair lay alittle dressing-jacket. He took it up and kissed it. 

Then he sat down to write to her. What a tidy, methodical little desk!Everything in its place. Dear, business-like, sea-witch Isabel! Here washer engagement book. He mustn't begin reading her letters!

After his first disappointment, he was half-glad he would have to waittill to-morrow to see her, --for, of course, he would wait. To have thussat in her room was almost enough for a first meeting. It was likestealing upon her while she slept. 

Then he began a letter; but as he wrote, who was this suddenly standingat his side? Was it Isabel? No. .. It was a little sobbing body quite nearto his, crying as if its heart would break. .. 

Oh, Jenny, Jenny--God forgive me!

The spell was broken, the fit was over. Theophil left no letter forIsabel, and no message, and the same evening he was once more back inhis little study in Zion Place, wild with remorse. O for the scourge andthe fire! But what penance shall avail to ease that poor littlecreature's broken-hearted crying?

"She seems to have had a shock!--She seems to have had a shock!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

BACK IN ZION PLACE

The shame of that wild unfaithfulness burned in Theophil's soul for manydays. It humiliated him like a physical degradation. To have been sodrunkenly untrue! It was one of those shocks to the moral nature fromwhich it never quite recovers, and Theophil's face lost some of itssteadfastness, his walk some of its firmness, for this perfidytowards Jenny. 

There was only one way to make the sense of it endurable, and he threwhimself into his work with a wasting vehemence. Where was his ambition?There was so much yet to do. New Zion had long since moved and hummed, and whizzed, the neighbouring towns had in a measure begun to dance tohis piping, but it must be a long while yet ere his name was to Londonand to the world what it was already to Coalchester, --that meremicrocosm of his fame. 

And till London knew him as well as Coalchester, there was no realmonument to Jenny. London--no longer the city of Isabel--must learn tosay "Theophilus Londonderry" so naturally, that it would some day serveas an unforgettable remembrance of Jenny. He must become a great man, because a great name is the one shrine in which love's memory may escapeoblivion. In the arms of his name Jenny would then be carried down theyears, one woman-star saved from the night of death. Again, the world, for which in one way he had so little care, was to help him indirectlyto keep his troth to Jenny. 

In a sense, the mountain was already coming to this young prophet; forwith the winter some of London's finest spirits were now and again to bemet in that incongruous Zion Place, as visiting lecturers to New Zion. And each one, as he came, was impressed as Isabel had been on that oldevening when she had discovered her colony of surprise-people. Eachrealised in that gravely masterful young minister a power and a force ofattraction which could not long remain hidden in that little countrytown. Meanwhile, their visits enabled him to test his own calibre bycomparison with theirs, and to realise that his instincts had notbefooled him, but that he too had been called to the stage of thegreat world. 

It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that theFrench poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made hisfantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was aconscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeedNew Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the mostimaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown theRenaissance in Coalchester by this _reductio ad absurdum. _ Thesubtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, andafter days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a youngcountry minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in themusty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow ofthe world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name amongthe stars. 

With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that hiswork at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seekthat larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little ZionPlace, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearinghimself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye tothese mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Couldhe bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny hadtransfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If hecould only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunkis shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Someday he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart forever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, withwhat ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled!

He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and hisheart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily breakin upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories. Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents!Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riotup and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of thesewalls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coarse odours. 

Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that theycan afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved fromexternal taint from generation to generation, become temples of whichthe very walls breathe nobleness, whereas the very birthplace of geniusitself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, andgarnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will stillcling about its rooms, and the butcher insist upon immortality too. 

Jenny's old mother was soon to turn into a memory also. She had fromtime to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeedon one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curiousprecision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, orlearnt it from private or unimpeachable information. Latterly she hadmet Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident thatthe old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise. 

But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepieras his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgetyand restless. She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of beingfirst down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite ofremonstrances. Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle ofthe night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen hadbeen her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it. 

There it was one wintry morning they found her sitting in the oldarm-chair in which her husband had died, and then they recalled herwords, for she had died on the very day she had predicted. 

She knew nothing of books, this quaint old woman, and had a veryantiquated taste in wall-papers; yet there would seem to be other waysof being wise, and it may indeed be held that books act too much asinsulators between us and the earth, to the mysterious currents of whichgnarled shapes of unlettered old men and women may be the more sensitiveas lying closer to the Mother. 

At all events, old Mrs. Talbot did seem to have won certain confidencesfrom life and death refused to more consciously alert ears. Hers hadbeen that hearing beyond listening to which secrets aresometimes revealed. 

Her death was more of a loss to her son-in-law than he might haveconceived, for not only was she the last of Jenny's flesh and blood, butshe was the only one else in the world who missed Jenny as he missedher. Others might, through sympathy, share his sorrow, but she and hewere partners in an actual loss. Something had definitely gone fromeach. Jenny seemed to be twice dead with the death of her mother, andTheophil's loneliness suddenly became more absolute and cut off thanever before. 

There was now no one left who could involuntarily recall rememberedwords and traits of Jenny, and who would for their own sakes want to sitdown and talk of her. All that was left that really knew Jenny was theold house itself. That remembered and talked of her still in its dumbway; and as he realised this, his mood once more changed. He forgot hisaspirations toward a broader world, and felt that, not only would it bea sort of unfaithfulness to leave Zion Place, but that to do so, and tobreak up this familiar harmony of home, this little cosmos of friendlyfurniture in accustomed relations, --pictures hung so from timeimmemorial, rooms dedicated to this use and no other, --would be todestroy the one mirror from which could come to him still glimpses ofJenny's living face. In just that look of the rooms was the bestportrait he possessed of Jenny. 

Though he had always been fond of Mr. Moggridge, it had not beforeoccurred to Theophil to make of him a companion; but about this time, asMr. Moggridge would drop in of an evening to discuss church matters, theyoung minister would be surprised to note how lonely he felt when he hadgone. Indeed Mr. Moggridge possessed that great undefinable gift ofcompanionability. 

What is needed in a companion is not brilliance of conversation, but thepower to make you feel that you are not quite alone in the universe. Dogs and even children possess this quality for some happily constitutedindividuals, but for others it is a necessity that the companion be ahuman being. 

A human being, the quieter the better, if possible a rather large man, diffusing a sense of warmth and safety, with perhaps no other gifts thankindliness and a pipe; and sometimes you have the best of company. AndMr. Moggridge, as we know, had brains too, and interesting instinctsfor new things. But his best gift was his humanity. Thus Theophilencouraged his evening calls and contrived to prolong them, though thetwo would often sit almost silent by the hour, their pipes alone makinga sort of conversation. 

Sometimes the young lions of "The Dawn" would come to supper, as in theold days, as Theophil called a year ago; but supper was a poor thingwithout Mrs. Talbot popping in and out of the room, though she hadseemed comparatively unimportant then, --not to speak of eager littleJenny, --not to think of Isabel. 

Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have anair of make-believe youth about them. Theophil's interest was indeedcentred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective;and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to himthat activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised thatin his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for themusic to which it had once been set in motion. Incomplete as in onesense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed alreadycomplete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resoundingcontinuance, in others he would sigh that it might end. 

However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows heloved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he wouldsometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about orwalking overhead. That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of cleanlinen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of adrawer in Jenny's room. Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chairin the kitchen. 

CHAPTER XXIX

AND SUDDENLY THE LAST

Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be amemory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of newworlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly toclose down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled halfsadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no suchmiscarriage of his young life!

Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the brokendreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that _its_ life-workshould suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of!It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life andcoquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Willit please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignityinconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worshipof the dead. 

Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had beendecided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing forthe leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated. Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifully foreseeing, had willed him abrief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him withthat terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of thatkiss Theophil should some day die. 

And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his planslaid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenlytrapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying. 

Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would notdie!

There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get upand go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. Itwas the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, likethe muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss andtwitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he hadbeen a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, torise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at aneighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation onthe Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction ofa year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in thethought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grownsuddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to makeone last appearance in the paltry lists?

He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler ofport wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollowface, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with ashudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man. 

Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image andsuperscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friendswould know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man. 

This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, broughttoo a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in therevulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background, and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiledto himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny shouldeven momentarily care about doing anything else!

Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other sideof that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other sideof light and darkness. In a few more weeks he. .. _HE?_ Would there stillbe _he_ anywhere in the universe?

Jenny! Perhaps there had been no Jenny all these months. Perhaps Jennystopped being Jenny forever in that last moment when she had tried towish him good-bye. And all his daily consciousness of her presence, allthe fancies of his faithful heart, had been idle as the words of a mantalking in his sleep. Those little offerings he had brought to heraltar, --she had never seen them; for perhaps Jenny had been an idol hehad made out of air, while he had been her lonely and unheededworshipper. 

Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as aneye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore?

All the wonderful colour and sound of things! Were these waning days tobe his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show?

Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands--and he mightnot be going to Jenny, after all. 

As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had sofar resisted grew more importunately pleading--the thought of Isabel. Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel. Had he, he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in afanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold? Had it not, after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal offaithfulness which had been Jenny's rather than his own? Had he in hisheart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that tolove her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny?

Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of onesupreme blessedness. He might look into Isabel's eyes again. 

She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would growradiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny. His hearttold him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and staywith him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song ofmagnificent life. 

Life is tragic, do you say? Life is cruel. Life is a splendidportico--to nothingness. Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stoodfor a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel. Life issplendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minuteof it is a prodigal eternity. 

Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her littleroom with a telegram just opened on her lap. The telegram ran: "Jenny isdead and I am dying. Theophil. " And this was the first message Isabelhad received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchesterstation eighteen months ago. 

She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaidhad forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhatcruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her, --that Jennyhad divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil haddetermined that they must never see each other again. 

Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent somuch in written words! Had he ceased loving her?. .. No, that she couldnever believe. They had _met_ too really for that. And, after all, thissilence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and alittle tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no powerover her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change. 

"Jenny is dead, and I am dying, " Isabel kept saying over to herself, divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, andsomething of Theophil's conflict during those silent months. 

"Jenny is dead, and I am dying, "--a sad, a tragic message, surely! Andyet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, itsreal significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised tofind it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, andTheophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of herreverie, her face was curiously lit with peace. 

She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; andthen she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulnesswith which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, andmethodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate, which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful ofletters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in thecentre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be includedamong her luggage. 

All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bringtogether; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken herto Theophil, --to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderfulwheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, arustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approachingwhisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel. 

Isabel!

You could hardly have told that Theophil was dying, and the face thatIsabel thus found again was marked by none of the dreadful writing ofdeath. His eyes were brighter, his brow more hollow, his cheeksthinner, --that was all; and he was to be of those of whom we havespoken, whose flame of life burns brightly to the end. No heavy mists ofLethe hung about his bed. Till his last heartbeat, he was to beconscious of the nearness of Isabel. For a fortnight he was thus to liewithin sight and touch of her. How good life is! Think of it, a wholefortnight! How extravagantly blessed!

Isabel was living in the same house with him day after day. She was novisitor, but went in and out of the room with the step of one who is athome. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sittingthere when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when shehad been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him, she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and asshe had bent over him, she had worn a household apron, --a wife's apron. Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never leavehim--till he died. 

"Oh, Isabel--to die!" he moaned one night as she sat by his side. 

"But think, dear, " she answered, with her head turned away, "think ofJenny. "

"Perhaps there _is_ no Jenny. "

No Jenny! Isabel's heart gave a little cry. No Jenny! Then there couldbe no harm . .. 

"Theophil, " she said, after a silence, "have you forgotten something wesaid to each other that day, --something we promised?"

For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes. 

"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that. "

"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?"

"No, " he answered simply. 

"May I, then?"

His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect thatthere would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving. 

"But Jenny?"

"If Jenny is there, she will understand now. "

I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed forthese two, no more unassailable peace. If their lives were to be quiteput out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anewelsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing thatcould happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of theirhearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least, they would win their most: they would die together. 

To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and thebeloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but themorning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereavedand lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takeswith it too all the accumulated happiness of all the years. That hourthese two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long asthey might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a littlelonger they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longermake sure of each other. 

Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel!

A little longer. 

"Shall we go to-night?"

"Not yet. .. Perhaps to-morrow, Isabel. "

But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingeredon much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they passthrough the strange gate of Death. 

So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last littlefeast, --once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table atTheophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packetIsabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk. 

Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine, and they drank it and ate the grapes together, --no happier people inGod's strange world. 

As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fireinto a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only withthe light from the fire. Then she refilled their glasses with wine, andbreaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a smallbottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled withthe wine. 

Then she and Theophil held up their glasses to each other. 

"Let us go deeper into the wood, " she said softly. 

"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, withtheir eyes firm and sweet upon each other. 

Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her headagainst his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became aheaven of silence. 

Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider thequality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life ofTheophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value ofhis own success.